A Day of Juxtaposition

By Ollie Otulakowski

Today we held a symposium where two representatives from the Campaign Against Human Trafficking (CAHT) and a survivor of human trafficking spoke to us at our lovely Ruskin Gannon University campus. Both ladies from CAHT gave us statistics on the signs of human trafficking from the perspectives of medical proffessionals that most of us will be in the future, so that when we encounter a patient we can save their life in more ways than one. Unfortunately, Florida remains in the 3rd state of recored trafficking cases so the signs can be easy to find, even in airports. Especially at airports. We were even given information on how social media can be used in favor of traffickers, which is a scary concept since some of us do not know who is following us on our accounts. It takes effort to not be scared all the time because trafficking is everywhere, the perpetrators are a particular breed of adaptable indiviaduals.

The day got more emotional when our survivor spoke. She gave us information on PTSD, and how 89% of Americans 40 years old and above have this condition, and how it needs more recognition. That is when she went into her own story.
It shocked some of the group on how nonchalant she was about the trauma, she was so comfortable with her past, but not in a nostalgic way. She accepts it. From my experience of seeing abuse and with handling my own story, I will not enter in all the details since I did not explically recieve our survivor's permission to enter in those details. I will just say it is heartbreaking that people can be cruel to each other for selfish needs, and in this case it was family.
Now, she has some off weeks but she is alive and thriving and an advocate for PTSD awareness. She even warned us future medical proffessionals that we can suffer from it, and that we should be ready for when the time comes. Because life always comes with death, and the human mind always seems to struggle with accepting that fact.

Before you will get too sad about our day, we did balance it with a beach day. While it was a bit cloudy and windy, it was beautiful. The sand was almost a white powder and we could not stop having it run through our fingers. We even swam in the coean, and got some odd looks because we must have been doing the Florida version of the polar plunge. The water was cold, and incredibly salty, and a new experience for everyone.

We experienced somethings, bad and good. It makes for an interesting day of differences and overall will make a memorable time that I hope we will keep forever, both the black and white.