In the emergency room at Children's Mercy Hospital of Kansas, nurse Lana Borden sees it all. But it's what she saw thousands of miles from here that captured her heart.
"It really rocked my world," said Borden. "I got to see things from a different perspective."
As a teenager she visited Zambia, a small country in southern Africa riddled with poverty.
"I had never seen poverty in such a way," said Borden. "Places where they did surgery where there was not even electricity or clean running water."
She went there with a singing group and left wanting to help.
"When you can't ice a sprained ankle, what do you do? Things like that I had to really learn," said Borden.
So she enrolled in nursing school while going back to Zambia every summer.
Now, more than a decade after she first went there, she's close to earning her Master of Nursing from Western Governors University, all to prepare for her biggest life choice yet - moving to Zambia permanently.
"My goal really is to invest in the nurses themselves and to encourage them to teach those good hygiene skills and all of those things that you do when you go through nursing school," said Borden.
She'll take what she learned in nursing school and teach it to others in a place that desperately needs her help - a place that now feels like home.
"I love so many people in the states and I love so many people in Zambia, and no matter which continent I'm on, I'm missing someone," said Borden.
Borden received a special scholarship for nurses from WGU to help pay for her master's degree. If you would like to apply for it, click here.
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Justin Wilfon can be reached at justin.wilfon@kshb.com.
