Hillsboro woman gains medical experience in Belize
Saturday morning, Hillsboro resident Debbie Sturgeon will receive her bachelor of science in nursing degree.
But for this nurse, the road to graduation led through an unexpected place — the tiny Central American country of Belize.
To fulfill a required nursing practicum, Sturgeon chose the road less traveled — she spent two weeks at the end of April as a medical missionary to an under-served area on the Belize coast, right next to the Caribbean Sea. Belize is just under Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
"Mission work has always been a dream of mine," said Sturgeon, who currently works as a nurse at Wichita Clinic.
So when she learned that Tabor's new nursing program required a community health practicum, Sturgeon decided that it would be a perfect opportunity to do some medical mission work.
She began searching the Internet for a medical mission, and she found an organization that seemed to jump out at her: the Belize Mission and Retreat, a nondenominational Christian organization. The mission is only a year and a half old, just in its building phase, Sturgeon said.
The mission is located on the Belize coast about 30 miles south of Belize City, the country's capital.
Sturgeon spent two weeks on the coast of the tropical country, where the main language spoken is English. But she was anything but stationary — most of her days there, she was traveling from town to town in a well-worn Geo Tracker.
The traveling wasn't easy. Most of the roads she and the mission's director traveled on were dirt-packed and led through dense tropical jungle, Sturgeon said. Belize has just three main highways, and the best of those is about the quality of Indigo Road.
Sturgeon spent a lot of her time in the Gales Point area, which is on the coast, but she also traveled inland to the cities of Belmopan and San Ignacio.
Sturgeon traveled with the mission director, and it usually took them at least two hours to reach their destination through the jungle.
"Not because of the miles — it's the roads," she said.
Sturgeon's duties varied — sometimes she performed basic medical checkups, while other times she stitched up lacerations or checked blood glucose levels.
"There was no typical day," she said. "You always wondered what was going to happen."
Sturgeon got the chance to bond with many of the people she met, but she particularly remembers a sweet woman named Clarissa, whose baby daughter she treated. Sturgeon now regularly communicates with Clarissa through mail — but just the regular kind. There's no electricity and no e-mail in the Gales Point area, she said.
Sturgeon is eager to return to the mission, possibly next February. And this time, she'd like to take her family with her — her husband, Mike, and her last remaining daughter living at home, 16-year-old Danielle.
"I was just so blessed to be able to do it," she said.
