My Passion For Medicine

I grew up the eldest of six siblings, two of them with severe Autism, and along with my grandmother, whose Arthritis, high blood pressure, and heart problems, each required round-the-clock attention. I was always assisting and on alert because it was the only way to be. Things were usually fast paced and sometimes overwhelming at home, and it quickly became the atmosphere I grew to love. It always reminded me of the hospital we were visiting so much because things were always busy and kept a certain way for the sake of the patients. I knew fairly early on in life that it was the type of environment I was destined to work in because I understood it on a much more deeper and personal level.

Most of my grandmothers caregivers happened to be nurses and for over a decade of my life I’ve been watching those nurses care for my grandmother on each of her visits to Regions Hospital in St.Paul, MN. I looked upon them with such admiration because not only did they give my grandmother the medication she required, or assist in the surgery that healed her of her proximal humerus fracture, but they provided her with a sense of comfort and compassion. They

Last summer I volunteered with the Health Commons here in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. Health Commons is project that deals with providing supplies needed for health, making connections, and mainly identifying various health concerns and barriers. There Cedar-Riverside neighborhood has a great Somali population to the point where it is jokingly even labeled as ,“Little Mogadishu”. As a Somali participant I am able to lend my services in more ways than one, by communicating with the Somali people in their native tongue which provides them with a sense of comfort because they know they don’t have to keep questions and comments bottled up due to language