West Sunbury family big on nursing
Three graduates of Butler County Community College's registered nursing program are among seven volunteers with ties to the community college returning this week to Honduras, where in 2016, 21-year-old Ashley Brehm and others raced at night through dirt streets to save the life of an unresponsive former street child.
Ashley, now 23; her sister, Alycia, 21; and their mother, Joyce, are BC3 registered nursing graduates who as volunteers with First United Methodist Church will mentor 43 children living at Project Manuelito in Talanga.
The 12-acre compound is located in the mountainous heart of the Central American country in which 61 percent of its citizens live in poverty, according to worldbank.org.
The poverty, said Joyce Brehm, who with her daughters lives in West Sunbury, “is incredible. It is so hard to even describe. When we all came back from our first trip and we sat down with my husband and son to try to describe what we experienced, you could tell they couldn't understand what we saw.”
The trip to Talanga will be the fourth for Ashley; the third for Alycia, a member of BC3's Class of 2018; and second for Joyce, a 1991 BC3 graduate.
They will be joined by, Deborah Kruger of Lyndora, an instructor in BC3's humanities and social sciences division, making her fifth trip; and her husband, Randy Kruger, director of BC3's physical therapist assistant program, making his fourth.
Holly Schaefer, 21, of Butler and a 2018 BC3 graduate with degrees in psychology and social work, will be making her second trip to Honduras; and Ashley Nagle, 19, of Chicora, a BC3 general studies student, making her first.
“I am going because I know that by helping one person, you are not changing the world,” Nagle said, “but you are changing the world for that one person.”
Each will pay about $2,000 to mentor the children, a portion of which is offset by yearlong fundraising.
The Brehms, graduates of Moniteau High School, work at Butler Memorial Hospital, Joyce and Ashley in the emergency department, and Alycia as a nursing assistant until she takes her National Council Licensure Examination, after which she hopes to be assigned to medical-surgery.
The trip, from Saturday to Aug. 4, marks the sixth year in which First United Methodist Church has sent volunteers through World Gospel Mission, Marion, Ind., to Project Manuelito.
“We will do whatever is needed,” Randy Kruger said. “Hanging drywall, digging, wall-building, painting, cleaning, wiring. We aren't sure what our work project will be. But whenever the kids are not in school, we are with them. We are immersed with them.”
Their purpose, Joyce Brehm said, is to build relationships with children ages 5 to 18 who may encounter foreign volunteers only six weeks a year — and not necessarily to spearhead medical care for the youths.
However, the medical care provided by her daughter, Ashley, who during the 2016 trip was without her mother and sister, saved the life of Ricky, an 18-year-old asthmatic Project Manuelito resident who on the night of Aug. 9, 2016, experienced severe respiratory distress.Ricky, whom Ashley described as being a physically fit 18-year-old in 2016, had been upset the evening of Aug. 9, and had been playing basketball within the compound.At 9:56 on that hot night — the average high temperature in Talanga on Aug. 9 is 83 degrees, according to accuweather.com — Ashley received a text-message from the resident American missionary named Justin asking her to check on Ricky.“Justin knew that, other than Randy, I was the only other one with medical knowledge,” Ashley said.Ashley sprinted across the compound — which includes boys and girls dormitories, a school and several houses, and called Kruger, who has CPR training.“Unbeknownst to us, Ricky was asthmatic and was having a bad attack,” Kruger said. “I had been in bed when he was becoming unconscious.”Those with Ricky had brought him indoors, where it was cooler, and had given him water, Ashley said, but could not get his breathing stabilized.Despite her having “just graduated. I was a new nurse” — Ashley said she was taught by her instructors to “Go with your gut. Don't second-guess yourself in that time. Make the decision.”The nearest medical center, in Tegucigalpa, was 40 miles away. A clinic was closer, Ashley said.“I had to make the call that he needed to go to the clinic,” she said.She, Krueger and one of Ricky's friends, a 17-year-old named Owen, sat in the back seat of a compact sport utility vehicle with Ricky lying across their laps. Elmer, another 17-year-old friend of Ricky's, was in the front passenger seat while a resident American missionary sped toward the clinic.“We had to race around like maniacs because we thought we were going to have to do CPR within a couple of minutes,” Krueger said. “I didn't think you could hit 60 miles an hour on those streets, but we did.”Ricky was unresponsive by the time they reached a clinic.Medical personnel inserted an IV into Ricky, Ashley said.“And he kind of came back to it,” she said. “And he was OK.”The group from BC3 and others also paid for Ricky's treatment and medications, Ashley said.
