{"id":3077,"date":"2012-08-17T19:41:33","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T19:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.globalroutes.org\/?p=3077"},"modified":"2012-08-17T19:41:33","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T19:41:33","slug":"being-a-doctor-in-morocco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/2012\/08\/17\/being-a-doctor-in-morocco\/","title":{"rendered":"Being a Doctor in Morocco"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Anti-Amoeba Medication<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Traveling in Morocco, it was inevitable that at least some of us would fall prey to diarrhea.\u00a0 What are the odds when you\u2019ve grown up in a world of hand sanitizers, and you come to live and work in a developing country where water and hygiene are not taken for granted?<\/p>\n

Each morning we would have a meeting as a group and we would go through a \u201cpoop scale.\u201d\u00a0 For the poop scale we each held up our fingers, one through ten, where five was completely normal, one was \u201cI haven\u2019t had a bowel movement for a week,\u201d and ten\u2026 was unfortunate.\u00a0 So, for those of us who were consistently \u201ctenning\u201d (having bad diarrhea) and were fairly miserable, the leaders decided to take us to a doctor.\u00a0 There were too many opportunities for the sickness to worsen or to weaken us significantly \u2014 especially in a climate that we were not used to.\u00a0 That turned out to be a good decision because a number of us had Amoebiasis.<\/p>\n

The doctor was not a stranger; he was the father of a former student of one of our leaders, Julia, and also on the plus side he spoke French fluently.\u00a0 Five of us (four students, one Julia) trooped into his spacious office where we sat down in front of his desk and one by one rattled off our almost identical symptoms.\u00a0 One by one he took us behind a partition on the other end of the room to give our stomachs an ultrasound that showed bubbles in our intestines.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While we sat around the table discussing the necessary lab work if we were to be treated and the prescriptions that he could write for us in the meantime, the topic veered slightly and turned to him and his education.\u00a0 He explained to me \u2013 in French\u2014 \u201cI am a surgeon, but here I\u2019m also a pediatrician, a cardiologist, an \u2026 etc.\u00a0 Because here in Morocco there aren\u2019t enough doctors, I must do everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I heard his words, I realized that much like falling prey to diarrhea because we are used to hand sanitizers and hygiene, we are also accustomed to having hundreds of doctors in a hospital each having spent a specific number of years studying medicine as well as their individual discipline.\u00a0 To be sitting in a doctor\u2019s office that wouldn\u2019t look out of place in an American hospital and yet to realize that that doctor has no choice but to do everything, take on every role, is sobering.<\/p>\n

As an aspiring doctor, I am saddened that there must be Moroccans out there who wish to become doctors but do not have the ability or the means to.\u00a0 And I\u2019m saddened that those who do have the opportunity and training must carry a much heavier burden than otherwise.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Traveling in Morocco, it was inevitable that at least some of us would fall prey to diarrhea.\u00a0 What are the odds when you\u2019ve grown up in a world of hand sanitizers, and you come to live and work in a developing country where water and hygiene are not taken for granted? Each morning we would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sethly-davis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalroutes.org\/staging\/8011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}