Goodbye

It all started 6 years ago with the idea of helping nurses take their first step into the humanitarian world.  Now One Nurse At A Time has grown into an organization which has funded 42 volunteer nursing scholarships and, as evidenced by emails, has helped countless nurses through our website.  One Nurse has given me the opportunity to serve my fellow nursing colleagues and to encourage and be encouraged by those nurses who see our profession as a ministry.  
This has been an exciting and rewarding ride, but now it is time for me to say goodbye. My life has changed drastically over the past 6 years.  My 3 children, ages 9, 6, and 11 months, need me present in their lives and I love being their mom.  I’m looking forward to having the time to spend with my kids and my husband.I will always support the core mission of ONAAT and will be cheering from the sidelines.   I look forward to seeing what the future holds for One Nurse At A Time and feel privileged to have been a part of such a wonderful organization.

Denise Walsh, RN, MSN said it best, “To look into the eyes of the desperately poor, and see their hope in your ability to care, is what it means to be a nurse.  You are the scientist, you are the caregiver, you are the nurse. I implore you to always have eyes that will see the injustices and the inequities in the world. And to know that your eyes are the eyes that the patient will always remember.”

Kindest Regards,
Staci Kelley, RN, BSN
Co-Founder

One Nurse At A Time

"We All Love, We All Struggle...We are All the Same"

Allsion Godchaux, RN, FNP traveled with Healing the Children to Bahia de la Caraquez, Ecuador April 20 - 27, 2012.  In total, they treated 70 patients, mostly children, and one emergent case of a 51 year-old homeless man.  The group of 16 medical personnel performed cleft lip and cleft palate repairs; ear reconstructions; tonsillectomies and adenectomies; hernia repairs, scar revisions and many other necessary surgeries. Allison's role was to be the 'glue' within the group. “As a family nurse practitioner I have medical education, training and experience, I have a background in nursing, and I speak Spanish.  I was meant to flow between operating rooms, the recovery room, patient and family waiting areas, the upstairs floor where we occasionally needed to admit patients, and interact as a go-between between the volunteers, hospital staff, the health department and social services organization.”

Allison enjoyed seeing the faces of the mother and fathers as their kids came out of the recovery room the most.  “The joy of their children being returned to them from surgery was beautiful to behold, as well as their gratitude to us for the services we provided.  We go into nursing to help people.  It is reaffirming to provide health services to others, and to be fully and honestly appreciated for what we do.  The joy we received could even be from acts as simple as calming a scared child before surgery, or educating the parents afterwards about how to care for their child post-op.  It was so enlightening and heart warming how they took everything we said, to heart.  I have not one doubt in my mind that those children are not currently receiving every care possible from their families during their recovery.”



Allison reflects, “It was reaffirmed for me that people are people wherever they are, whatever language they speak.  They love each other, their children, and will do what they can for them.  They have similar concerns that we have for our children.  We are all parents, we all love, we all struggle, and in that regard, we are all the same.”

One of them most memorable moments Allison recalls is a “51 year old male emergent patient that came in through the emergency room.  The general surgeon assessed him and determined that he would do the surgery the next day.  One local nurse said they would admit him that night, so he could be cleaned, prepped for surgery.  The second nurse said he could not be admitted because he did not have family.  I asked what the signficance was, of not having family.  I was told that there is not enough nursing staff to provide this care, that it is the role of the family to provide it.  As a homeless person, he did not have the family.  Luckily, we had an extra nurse who provided all the care for him that they typically expect the family to do, or he might not have had the surgery, which he desperately needed.  He was a humble man.  Although we helped the children through our work, it is easier to take care of the kids, and not so much a homeless man.  We definently changed his life.  I am grateful that we are allowed latitude to perform these exceptions.”

“My work hours had been reduced at my job, and it was doubtful to me whether or not I could afford  this trip or even if I should take this trip.  One Nurse at a Time (ONAAT) provided me with enough financial support that I felt I could justify my spending the remainder amount of money required to be able to go.  It was also a validation to me, that ONAAT felt it important enough for me to go, that they were willing to help fund the trip.”


Allison Godchaux is a family nurse practitioner, in Kansas, at la Clinica Medica, and LifeWorks Wellness Center.  She received her Master’s of Nursing degree at the University of Kansas Medical Center,  Bachelor’s of Nursing degree at California State University, Sacramento.   She enjoys her family, outdoor activities, and bicycling.   Every year she rides her bicycle 150-180 miles, to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Allison has been part of a project vaccinating cats and dogs against rabies in Ecuador, with Los Amigos de las Americas;  worked in an orphanage in Mexico,  with Los Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos;  and worked in Ecuador, with Healing the Children, as a recovery room nurse for children receiving cleft lip and cleft palate repair.  
Allison has served in the United States Naval Reserve for 13 years as a Hospital Corpsman, with the Fleet Marine Force, and Naval Cargo Battalions. 

"Perfect Moments Don't Come in Perfect Packages"

There are so many words swirling around in my head when I try to describe my experience as a mission nurse. Certainly the words sweltering, sticky, dirty, sweaty and exhausting cover the physical part, but the physical is the most superficial aspect of the experience of mission nursing. Mind and spirit are the deeper aspects, and this is where I find the most authentic words to describe the experience.

How do I describe the sheer joy I felt holding the hand of a child on a rickety ferry blasting Bollywood music on our way to provide typhoid and malaria testing on a remote island? Or the overwhelming welcome we received in each of the villages we visited with all the villagers gathered to sing for us? Perfect moments don’t come in perfect packages and they aren’t always received with perfect grace. I found myself on the verge of tears at the oddest moments most of the week. The interaction with the villagers we met brought me back to that primal place I first visited when I decided to become a nurse 21 years ago. For me, the decision to become a nurse was divinely inspired, a response to a harrowing 2 years of my little daughter’s treatment for leukemia. Thus, nursing has always been my ministry. It’s when I’m able to be most in the moment and most connected to my reason for existing on this planet.

Mission nursing is not easy! The heat in India in May is annihilating. Simple things like putting on gloves become a challenge when your hands are dripping sweat. (Thankfully a team member brought a little container of baby powder.) There are no toilets in the jungle, a fact which was painfully brought home to me the day I absolutely had to go and was directed to a corner where 2 roosters were tied up. I gave up my vegetarian ways for the rest of the trip and ate all the chicken that was served to me.

You become concretely aware of what you don’t have: plastic bags for medical waste, sharps containers (we had 2, which filled up the first day and we ended up using empty water bottles), dressing supplies. We had to tote all of our medical waste back with us in our backpacks.

The cultural differences are both charming and amusing. I cringe when I say amusing, because I know I was probably the source of a lot of Indian laughter as I bumbled along. I imagine the look on my face was pretty funny the first time I was presented with a huge plate of hot rice and curry and realized that I was expected to eat it with my hands. Or when the Indian ladies poured buckets of water over my feet after the encounter with the roosters in the open air loo. And Indians have this head wagging thing that they do, which means “yes”, “I approve”, “hello” or all of the above.

The deepest feelings I have about my mission experience actually involve the Indian head wag. As the villages lined up for testing, I made a point of holding each hand, looking into their eyes and smiling. When I got the smile and head wag in return I found my heart filling up and realized that I was once again experiencing the essence of why I became a nurse. It’s so easy to lose this connection with our patients in our rushed and impersonal culture. How wonderful to find it again in a place where communication transcends the boundaries of language and culture to come straight from the heart.

-Liza Leukhardt, RN
Nurses for the Nations, Andra Pradesh, India, May 14-24, 2012

Liza Leukhardt decided to become a nurse 20 years ago after caring for her three year old daughter during two years of chemotherapy for childhood leukemia. Having already worked as a newspaper reporter, elementary school teacher and theater costumer, Liza views nursing more as a ministry than a career. For the past twenty years she has been a hospice nurse. Her ability to work with the dying is a gift she discovered during her daughter’s illness. Today her daughter is a robust and healthy 29 year old woman with an exceptional empathy for others in need. Liza currently works as a weekend Baylor nurse for a local home care agency while pursuing a master’s in nursing at the University of Hartford. She is a contributing writer to nursetogether.com and her story may be found in the anthology “Nurses on the Run” edited by Karen Buley.