Marriage and medicine: Plano pediatricians recall mission trip to Rwanda

Jaeon and Rebecca met on the night shift at the pediatrics unit in Children’s Hospital in Dallas. He was a second-year resident. She was a nurse on the night shift. And before long, they were dating.

Before they met, Rebecca often talked about boarding the Mercy Ship, a hospital boat that carries resources, medicine and life-saving surgical services to areas where they’re non-existent. Jaeon also considered Doctors Without Borders for many years. During the last year of his residency, he was offered the opportunity to take time off, travel abroad and live out his dream as a medical missionary through Samaritan’s Purse.

“While we were dating, we both were like, ‘This is what we want to do at some point. Why not do it after we get married?” Rebecca said. So that’s what they did.

They had a beautiful November wedding in 2016. Instead of cutlery, dishware and other wedding gifts, their guests donated a collective $15,000 to their mission fund. Jaeon finished training at the end of June 2017, and the pair set off for Rwanda the first week of July.

During their three months there, the couple served in the rural community of Kirambo at the Kibogora Hospital, a Christian mission hospital with over 250 beds. To get to Kirambo, they had to fly in to the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, take a small shuttle flight to an airport two hours away, then drive another hour to the secluded, rural Kirambo community near the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Their first day in the hospital, the Abrahams came face to face with a bare-bones hospital with limited resources and limited equipment, a stark contrast to the world-class hospital they came from.

Their days in Rwanda usually began with breakfast at 7 a.m., morning prayer with the medical staff around 7:30 a.m. and then they’d begin rounds. As a doctor/nurse team, the Abrahams saw 80 patients a day, treating children for vomiting, diarrhea, worms and normal childhood bronchial and respiratory infections. They’d also consult at the neonatal and intensive care units, then go back for rounds.

“We’re very spoiled,” Jaeon said. “We both were trained at Children’s and did everything at Children's. When we go over there, it’s a very rural hospital. They struggle even with IV fluids, which is something simple for us."

In the states, medical technology allows machines to deliver the right dosage of medicine per hour, to regulate pumps, tubes, central lines and IVs to keep sick children alive. Resources like blood and IV fluids are easily attainable. In Kirambo, the nearest blood bank is nearly four hours away, which makes blood transfusions extremely difficult. In Kirambo, there aren’t many specialties. The doctors are a jacks of all trades, Jaeon said.

Before American doctors practice on their own, they have years as a resident with other doctors guiding them and teaching them. Meanwhile, many Rwandan doctors graduate and immediately being practicing without that period of guidance and support. They’re out on their own, “but it’s because of the need,” Jaeon said.

In Kirambo, illness comes from unsanitary water, malaria and undercooked meat. In Kirambo, children die from dehydration and lack of access and resources. For Rebecca, the reality of death was the hardest part of their mission trip.

“The mentality of losing a child wasn’t even on my radar because here we can save everybody,” Rebecca said. But in Kirambo, if a patient needed a “complicated” treatment like a blood transfusion, she had to question, “Is this child going to make it?”

But even in the midst of poverty and sickness, Kirambo have community, Rebecca said.

“One of the nicest things that we saw was how family-oriented that community is. It’s just really amazing, and how nice the Rwandan people are. They’re very friendly and loving. Out of their nothing, they will give you whatever they have,” Jaeon said.

As a Christian mission hospital, they loved the opportunity to combine their passions with their faith in service to others.

The pair had to cut their stay to three months after several bouts of sickness, but they have plans to continue international service, whether it be in Rwanda, Mexico or even here in North Texas.

“One thing we did learn is three months is not enough time to make a huge difference,” Rebecca said.

Through education and funding much-needed supplies – oxygen concentrators, blood pressure cuffs, stethoscopes, tubing and other necessities – they hope they’ve made some lasting impact on Kirambo the way Kirambo made an impact on them.