Hannah Heimbigner is 21, a first-year Emory nursing student. For the past two weeks, she and other nursing students have given care to migrant farm workers near Moultrie, in south Georgia. Each student was assigned to keep a daily journal.
From Hannah’s journal: I talked to a patient that is the same age as my father but looked about twice as old. Considering the life expectancy of migrant farm workers, his appearance made sense. I mustered up enough Spanish to ask him about where his family was at the moment. He said that his wife and children were still in Mexico.
» MYAJC.COM EXCLUSIVE: Read Hannah Heimbigner's complete journal of her experiences in Moultrie
Back home in Clearwater, Fla., Hannah’s family has a townhouse near the beach. She has her own room, and sharing it with someone else would be terrible.
Not far from the fields, she and the other students worked in some of the camps where migrant workers live: old trailers and rundown houses with as many as 20 bunk beds in rows.
At one camp Hannah and her co-workers had to set up their medical table beside a dumpster. The camp smelled of urine; fleas seemed to be everywhere. Dogs ran free.
At another camp, flies bothered everybody. Hannah, who was drawing blood from patients and preparing it for various lab tests, discovered that when you have blood on your hands, you can’t get the flies off your face.
» MYAJC.COM EXCLUSIVE: See Hannah's photos from the Farmworker Family Health Program
From Hannah’s journal: Tonight, I was assigned to the hemoglobin and glucose station to screen for diabetes and anemia. I was very afraid at first as I have a phobia of needles and pricking. When I first started, my hands were shaking. Men were lining up, and there were only two people doing the screenings. I was really afraid I would mess up. Before I knew it, I was speeding through it. I was no longer afraid. I got really good at getting the blood out and scooping it up into the hemoglobin blood collector thingy.
Hannah was surprised at how many of the workers showed signs of developing diabetes. As best she could in her limited Spanish, she talked to them about the importance of eating a range of healthy foods – and they taught her something in return.
From Hannah’s journal: Something that frustrated me was finding out, after consistently asking the patients about the food served in the cantina, that these people truly don’t have access to fruits and vegetables, only greasy foods such as hamburgers, tacos and fried chicken. We can teach them until we are blue in the face about proper nutrition, but unless the food served in their cafeteria changes, their food intake won’t change.
Farm labor takes its toll on virtually every part of the workers’ bodies: shoulders, backs, legs, hands. One night, Hannah watched physical therapists knead a man’s knotted back muscles for 10 minutes before they could adjust his spine.
» SEE THE STATISTICS: Facts on farmworkers' health (.pdf)
Feet take a beating too. Standing, day in and day out, in fields often saturated with pesticide-laced water, many workers have a fungus on their feet. Their skin is peeling and raw. Often, their toenails are discolored or contorted. If their shoes have holes, the problems are worse. The cure can be as simple as a new pair of shoes.
Although many of the students, like Hannah, spoke only a little Spanish, their instructors taught a different way to communicate and to heal: through “intentional touch.” Among the migrants, that meant washing, massaging and applying powder and lotion to the workers’ feet as well as examining them for injuries and disease.
From Hannah’s journal: One patient was very reluctant to go to foot care because he was afraid his friends would make fun of him. He didn’t think the activity was very manly. After the foot care, though, (he said he) was very glad that he went. This really touched me that I was able to give comfort to a man who probably had never received this sort of treatment before.
Nights are for workers; days are for their children. The kids get screenings for vision problems, dental hygiene and height and weight. Hannah was shocked at how many children were overweight, until her instructors explained it.
From Hannah’s journal: When the second generation comes around, they are generally beginning to take on a more American look, becoming more obese due to prolonged exposure to the diet. In addition we learned that these farm workers usually have limited access to transportation to grocery stores and end up eating anything that you can buy in a gas station.
» LEARN MORE: Read other students' journal entries on the Emory nursing program blog
The students also drew blood from the children to test them for signs of diabetes and other ailments.
From Hannah’s journal: Growing up, I was always the wimpy kid who cried at everything related to “ouchies.” One of the nurse practitioners taught me how to calm the children’s fears by having the child first practice on her. (She secretly disabled the lancet.) Once the children understood what was going to happen to them and saw the point of view of a nurse, their fears were calmed and they bravely allowed us to stick them.
Dental hygienists were on hand to clean the children’s teeth. The nursing students helped the hygienists show the kids how to brush and floss.
From Hannah’s journal: While the children waited to see the hygienists, they sat at a table with books teaching about good dental habits and models of teeth that the children could play with. On their own, many of the kids started brushing the teeth of the stuffed animals that were at the table. They would say things like, “we need to brush his teeth, so he doesn’t get any cavities.”
In the world Hannah grew up in, some people label immigrants as interlopers who soak up tax dollars paid by law-abiding citizens. One thing that struck her in Moultrie — in addition to the physical toll of life in the fields — was how grateful the migrants were for the care and attention she and the other students gave them.
From Hannah’s journal: I decided that I really like doing this work. I like to do things physically and despise the idea of sitting in a chair doing paperwork for the rest of my life. It feels good for my body to move and to sweat from the labor. I think this probably stems from a primal need to do work. I think I want to do this type of work for my career. I want to help people and see their faces and know them.
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