January 29, 2019-- two days before the deadline-- I applied for BYU's Ghana Global Health Internship with Unite for Sight. I quickly realized that I had very little time to complete the application requirements and I scrambled to get everything submitted in time. With a little bit of luck and a lot of blessings, I was accepted and immediately began the journey. During a period of 3 months, I juggled a full-time job, 40+ hours of internship training, fundraising, getting travel vaccines, visiting the Ghanian embassy 3 times for my visa and selling my housing contract. I ended up moving from the D.C area to Utah and continued my internship preparation with my group from BYU.
Ghana Prep Pics!!
I've found that through my travels, every struggle has come associated with a success.
Silver Linings
1) During this process, I ran into some minor complications getting my medical forms filled out and submitted to Unite for Sight. 7 phone calls and 3 visits later I finally got all the forms I needed, and made some great friends at the doctor's office in the interim. (:
2) After reviewing my medications, I realized my epi-pens were expired and I needed to get the refilled ASAP. I called the insurance company and they told me my plan only covered the pediatric doses. I was ready to pay out of pocket when I got to the pharmacy and they had the adult dose in stock, applied a coupon and I walked away paying $10 for the dose that I needed, when it is usually a $100-300 expense. Woah!! the app "GoodRX" has amazing coupons!
3) After getting my travel vaccines from the Health Department in VA, I flew out to Utah for a couple weeks to attend my brother's wedding. After receiving my prescription for Malaria pill, I tried to fill the prescription in Utah, but discovered that the doctor had written the wrong year on it, and the pharmacy refused to fill it until the Health Department called them and confirmed. The issue with this, was I was about to get on a flight across the U.S in less than 24 hours and the Health Department in Virginia was closing in 1 hour. So... I ran back to the pharmacy in Utah, packed the prescription and got on my flight. Once back in the D.C. area, I called the Health Department who had apparently been playing phone tag with the Utah pharmacy while on my flight. To make a very long story short, I was able to get the prescription after 4 days of pharmacy phone tag.
The good news about this story is that I learned what to do if there is an administrative issue with a prescription and what the protocol is for that. It was crazy stressful in the moment, but I definitely learned a ton.
4) Another tricky component was: I needed to move from the house I was renting from in preparation for the study abroad and wasn't sure if I would have to pay rent while in Ghana. After a considerable amount of stress, I found out one day that someone was interested in my room and they ended up taking over my contract so I was able to leave!
5) On our flight from Utah back to D.C., we had a layover in Oakland and as we were boarding our plane, realized it was overbooked. After volunteering our seats, we were placed on another flight (with another layover) and separated from our checked luggage. During the flight, my water spilled on my computer. We arrived at 1:00am and were exhausted from the 18 hour travel day. In the morning, our luggage still hadn't showed up. We started to get nervous and called the airport, but the luggage still wasn't delivered. I started to get anxious as my suitcase had specific things I needed to bring to Ghana, that I needed to pack. At the very end of the day, the luggage did come and it ended up being okay.
Perks of this experience: 1) we were flown into a closer airport than our original itinerary 2) I learned how to kind of re-boot my computer and somehow get in "un-water damaged," 3) we ended up getting extra skymiles for our detour and 4) I got to watch some new episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress" on the flight!
With lots of support from friends and loved ones, I am now just 1 day away from taking off to Ghana!
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