In 1976 I was living as a missionary in the Yucatan section of Mexico giving palliative care to the dying and translating for medical teams that came from the US to help people who had no medical care.
While I was at the mission I met two remarkable American nurses who were traveling for pleasure and adventure. They helped out with some of the mission work and they had worked as volunteers in disasters in the US.
When the earthquake struck in neighboring Guatemala they insisted on going in and dragged me along as a translator because their Spanish was inadequate. Jolene was a large, very pretty natural blonde of the type you see in our mid-west. Nearly 6 feet tall, large boned, muscular and quietly self-confident, she radiated the strength of the legendary giantesses of fable. I never saw her at a loss in any situation. She was always calm, always very compassionate and steady. Being with her while the earth shook like a mad thing and adobe bounced around us like children's blocks and the lines of wounded humans stretched as far as we could see seemed manageable somehow and I depended on her as if she were a guardian angel miraculously made flesh.
We had numerous wonderful, generous doctors volunteering their time and skill and we also had interns and residents sent by their respective training institutions as part of what they had to do to graduate. The latter were not always suited for the work. One young resident was completely overwhelmed by the constant flood of wounded and gangrenous patients, the 20 hour work day where we often laid down right in the treatment tent while the line laid down outside, for two hours sleep then up and going again. This took a toll on all of us but young Ricardo had some chemical help to rely on. He was a speed freak with the typical sores on his face and all the behavioral oddities of the species.
As the days ground along we all wore thin and raggedy in our nerves but the doctors rotated out and they only had to last 6 days. By day 5 Ricardo had crossed over into the surreal. A country woman had come for an eye wound. She had been holding one of her chickens when an aftershock began. The animals always knew long before the humans when a quake was starting. They could feel it or hear it and often their erratic behavior was the best first warning we got. This particular chicken had freaked out and sunk its claw deep into the woman's face. The worst part of her wound was a cut that tore from inside the corner of her eye out to her hairline. The claw had been dirty and the wound was contaminated.
Ricardo was from a wealthy family and had an attitude that some humans were more human than other humans. Jolene had sedately and respectfully corrected this thinking more than once and she had tweaked him into a semblance of being a real doctor. But by day 5 her teaching had evaporated and he decided not to clean this poor old country woman's wound and he was going to sew it shut with no pain injection and the filth inside. I tried to talk to him but I was summarily dismissed. As he prepared his needle and thread I ran for Jolene.
Jolene came. She never ran but with those long legs I had to run like a lunatic just to keep up with her purposeful stride. When she got to Ricardo she very calmly and respectfully asked about the procedure. I translated. He basically told her to back off, he didn't have time or energy to waste on the poor woman and he was the doctor. A muscle jumped in Jolene's jaw and the reached out and grasped the doctor by the front of his white coat. She hoisted him up in the air so that his face was level with hers and his feet were about 5 inches off the ground. Face to face, calmly, quietly, she told him exactly how he was going to proceed with the patient. She told him that I was going to observe and report the result to her. She also told him that it was going to be in the best tradition of medicine or he was never going to practice medicine anywhere even after she beat the shit out of him.
He indicated that he understood and that he would obey (all nonverbally because his throat was somewhat compressed)
Jolene set him down gently, brushed some of the wrinkles from his coat and said, "Thank you, Doctor." She left. After treating the patient appropriately, he left. He could deal with the danger of aftershocks and tumbling rock but Jolene was just too much for him.
She is one of my heroes.
