Treating patients in the African bush, playing soccer with orphans and a chicken in the operating room are memories Sarver native Olivia Hess will carry for a lifetime.

Hess is a Freeport High School graduate and the daughter of Mindy and Donald Hess.

A soon-to-be graduate of Duquesne University's five-year physician assistant program, Hess recently spent 17 days in Liberia treating patients whose medical complaints are much different from those in the United States: malaria, malnutrition and syphilis, to name but a few.

Hess, who has specialized in family practice, said she was excited to have the opportunity to go to Liberia, a new education destination for both Duquesne University and the physician assistant program.

The contact was made through a Pittsburgh attorney, originally from Liberia and a Duquesne alumnus, who was looking for a way to give back to his homeland.

Friends and family of the five students who went to Liberia, along with aid organizations like Brother's Brother, donated items like medical supplies, laptops, soccer balls, footballs and basketballs for the Liberian children. They also had a microscope to donate to the Elwa Hospital's laboratory.

Although Hess' sister is an U.S. Air Force nurse, whom she visited in England, that experience didn't prepare her for landing in Liberia.

Welcome to the circus

Walking out of what Hess said one would barely call an airport, the Duquesne students found "a circus."

"It was mass chaos," she said, explaining the group landed shortly after Ghana beat the United States in the World Cup.

The students found their hosts and were taken to Elwa Hospital, which looked more like a motel, Hess said, with one room serving as an emergency room, the next the operating room, another the labor and deliver room.

The students traveled with Mark Freeman, an assistant professor at Duquesne. They stayed in a guesthouse on the hospital grounds. There they had a lesson in the hardships of the African people.

Freeman said a man would come to the guesthouse each day to clean. First he'd go through the garbage in the house, taking what he wanted, things that could be eaten or reused. Then he would take what he didn't want and throw it in a pile in the backyard where others would pick through the refuse.

"After I saw that, we took all of our leftover food and put it in plastic bags so the food wouldn't fall on the ground when it was thrown out so someone could eat it," Freeman said. "It makes you feel guilty for all that you have and for how wasteful we can be."

The students were divided among the hospital's departments so they could gain experience in each one. Hess said it was surprising how little the hospital had in the way of cleaning supplies and the openness of the rooms.

"There were chickens and lizards around and they all found their way into the hospital — including the 'sterile' operating room, but no one seemed to mind," she said.

The funniest thing they experienced while on the trip, Hess said, was an operating room technician who caught a roaming chicken one morning and kept it in the bottom of a cabinet in the OR for the day.

"So you'd be in the middle of an operation and you'd hear the chicken scratching at the doors or crowing," she said. "But that chicken was dinner that night for the man, so it stayed there until he went home."

In the bush

After several days, the students and Freeman went into the bush, or the undeveloped part of the country, to work in a Baptist clinic able to perform lab tests the hospital could not.

The group drove to the small village where word was sent out that they would see patients. In about two hours, between 300 and 400 people had shown up for the mobile clinic.

"They can't announce the visit sooner, or thousands will come to be seen," Hess said.

First they dewormed the children, which helps to clear up other health problems before they start.

Then Hess and two other students sat down at little desks outside with an interpreter and began seeing patients. Malaria, typhoid, gastronomical illnesses, urinary tract infections and syphilis are among the chief complaints of most patients.

"We have to make the diagnoses based on interviews with the patients because there is no way to sit down and physically examine all of these people," Hess said.

"It was exhausting and overwhelming, but at the same time it felt good to do something for so many people."

One thing that did bother Hess and her peers was a seeming lack of compassion for patients by Liberian health care workers.

"I guess it's because of the wars and what they've been through and that a lot of people die, but it doesn't seem to bother them the way it does us," she said.

The one case that stands out is a young man who needed an operation.

"A 20-year-old man came in who had malaria, but also, we think a bowel obstruction (no X-rays), and we spent several days trying to get him stable for an operation," Hess said, looking uncomfortable for the first time.

"He was gasping for breath as they did the operation, and I and another student were holding his hands, trying to give some comfort, to know at least he wasn't alone. But he died on the operating table," she said, blinking back tears.

"There was no equipment to tell us how much oxygen he was getting. Something that we take for granted here in the U.S.," Hess added.

The students also got to visit an orphanage where they played and spent time with the children. They also visited one of Mother Teresa's AIDS hospice clinics in Monrovia, Liberia, where the cleanliness and good health of the patients impressed both Freeman and Hess.

Back home

Now that they're home, the students who went to Liberia are completing journals on their experience, a requirement for class, and in the case of Hess, preparing for gradation and a first PA job.

While it was a short visit to Liberia, Hess said she learned lessons about how she wants to deliver care to her patients.

"I learned that compassion and concern are two things you must have for your patients, and that is something I definitely plan to carry with me," she said.