A Prince George paramedic will be putting her skills to use in cholera-stricken Haiti.
For nearly three weeks, MY, 46, will be working 12 hours a day, six days a week, at a cholera relief station in Cite Soleil, a slum on the outskirts of Port -au-Prince.
Y, who will be flying to the Caribbean country tomorrow and returning to Prince George on January 28, made the move after her sister, a doctor living in Ontario, sent her an e-mail from Samaritan's Purse.
Best known for its Operation Christmas Child program, in which school children send shoe boxes of small gifts to less-fortunate counterparts in other countries, Samaritan's Purse also has a medical wing.
MY sent an application on Dec. 2 and a response came the next day.
"I was shocked and excited," she said.
A mother of four, Y, 48, decided against going over the Christmas break so she could be with her kids but is now ready to go though she remains a little nervous.
"I want to get going so I can stop thinking about it and just do it," she said and added she's purposely refrained from looking at videos on the internet about the situation.
"I don't want to really load myself up with a bunch of ideas and fears before (I go) that might in fact not be true," she said.
Y has been a paramedic for six years, and suspects that's why Samaritan's Purse responded so quickly.
