Shirley Trudeau

Bill Richardson introduced Shirley, a graduate of MSS and St. Joseph's at McGill.  She has served for 35 years at Pen. General and at Huronia Hospital in the operating room and retired in 2000.  Finding that slow, she worked for 5 years with the Simcoe Muskoka Health Unit.  She has volunteered on 11 missions abroad, on which she takes travel packs with sufficient medications for 1,500 prescriptions.  He latest visit was to the Yucatan.

Shirley reports the Yucatan is very hot.  The group she travelled with this time was relatively small - 5 from the US, 5 from Canada and 2 from Mexico.  There was a pharmacist who though valuable as a linquist and translator turned out to be a talker and a doctor who is retired from practice in the States and who spent as much or more time proselytizing as he did diagnosing.  

There was a physiotherapist, a physician's assistant which would be like a nurse practitioner here, an opthamolagist and a dental assistant.  As a regular nurse Shirley usually finds herself assigned to triage and to doing first aid, changing dressings and etc.  When the mission arrived they found the locals had not prepared and there were shortages and confusion at customs, especially over the travel pack full of drugs.  She finally just left them to it at midnight but the drugs did make it to them later.  They had to buy air mattresses because their hosts at the mission, a group of 7th Day Adventists, didn't have enough beds.  Their practice is a daily devotional and Shirley found them to be more evangelical than her regular worship.  When her turn came she discussed the value of a friend as a gift to self.

They visited a different village each day and again they suffered from poor advance planning but the President of the Yucatan and a local mayor had raised some funds and arranged for 3 service trailers to be made available, including one for opthamology.  She says that their diet is so poor they actuall are starting to have an obesity problem - tortillas and pop.  Soda is cheaper and cleaner than the local water so diabetes is spreading and there is a need for much better education.  But she always found the people to be grateful, which she says is not always the case here.

Shirley says there is still much to do and she thanked Rotary for help on her various journeys, saying that volunteers work with the grace of others.

Bill presented a cheque for $1,000.00 to help defray the expense of the travel pack and to help her daughter who is picking up Shirley's torch.