A Trip to the Doctors

For my fourth Equity Project post, Liezel and I decided to go to Palo Alto Medical Center in Fremont to volunteer. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures except for outside of the building.

After school Liezel and I walked to my car and I drove to the medical center that is located near Walnut and Paseo Padre. We parked, walked in and waited for Liezel's mom to come out of the lab area. Liezel's mom came out and directed us to the H.R. person in charge and her name was Arlene. She told us to put all of our stuff in the break room of the Laboratory and she gave us a tour of the medical center. This area wasn't a very crowded hospital since it was only like a clinic. She explained to us how we weren't really able to do much since we didn't do a thorough background check and how it was last minute.

Our first job that we did was push around a lady in a wheelchair to a different part of the hospital. I think this was a really cool thing to do since we were able to talk to patients and help them have a better day. I forgot what this lady's name was unfortunately but she came to the hospital a lot since she had a lot of medical problems that came with age. She was living alone in California so she didn't have family taking care of her. I felt like Liezel and I made her day a little better since we were able to talk to her and have a friendly conversation. She is really used to being alone which made me feel really bad because I feel like as you age, that's when you really need family the most.

After pushing an old lady in a wheelchair, the next job we did was help another little lady move from one area of the hospital to the other. Liezel and I weren't really that used to the medical center so we walked with a nurse to help us around. I remembered this little lady's name which was Barbara. Today she was here for a check up and all we did was walk her from the room where they drew blood to the food cafeteria. Since she just gave blood the doctors made her eat food so Liezel and I accompanied her as she ate. We talked about where she lived and where she grew up and how she lives now. I thought she was so cute and little I wanted to take her home.

Liezel and I didn't do much after eating with Barbara since talking with her took up a lot of the time. After that we greeted patients and put magazines onto the tables. I felt kind of weird and awkward since we were in the waiting room for sick patients...

Overall this was a good volunteer experience. It's nice to talk to new people and learn what their lives are like. Volunteering at hospitals are a good experience to just meet new people and see how they're struggling. You never know how much of an impact you have on somebody because just from what I learned today, not many people have as much family and friends to have that take care of them. The last thing you would ever want is to be sick and not have anybody to care about you. A person that you might see that day, might not be there the next as sad as that sounds. So it's important to always acknowledge all the people around you. My visit to the hospital made me cherish life and not to take a second for granted and another thing I learned was to value my health.