By Victor Greto
Wearing surgical gloves, Anya Edun held a man’s calf muscle in her hands.
“It feels like fish,” she said of the dark muscle.
Moments later, Edun gently held a heart, small intestine, liver, foot, hip and leg socket.
Unlike several other members of her group, she felt no compunction in touching and feeling everything the medical students offered her.
Edun, 15, of Pembroke Pines, also couldn’t help expressing herself through facial grimaces that ranged from embarrassment to fascination, periodically giddy in the serious presence of a cadaver, then transfixed as the workings of the heart and liver were explained to her.
Edun was part of Nova Southeastern University Health Profession Division’s annual health careers camp, which offers inner-city and rural teens throughout central and South Florida a week of exposure to medical field options. This year’s camp at the Davie university’s campus had about 120 teens from 19 counties, including students from Hallandale Beach, Hollywood and Pembroke Pines.
This is the 12th year the school has offered the camp to South Florida students, said Dr. Steven B. Zucker, director of the Area Health Education Center at the university. Nova began offering it to central Florida students five years ago.
Since the camp began, the school has exposed more than 1,000 children to health careers, including osteopathic medicine, physical and occupational therapies, pharmacy, optometry and dentistry.
The point of the camp, Zucker said, is to show opportunities to minorities who have limited role models and limited access to the health market.
Statistics of the earliest South Florida camps show that more than 75 percent of the students who attended went on to post-secondary school and then health careers, Zucker said. The teens are chosen from hundreds of applicants.
For Edun, who attends Stranahan High School, it was a way of expanding options and understanding what is involved in getting a medical degree.
“I came here because I get to hear about a lot of different medical fields,” she said. But, “I like forensic science.”
It showed. While other teens covered their noses and mouths to fight the cadaverous chemical smell of the anatomy lab, Edun was out there in front, with hands outstretched, confirming her desire to become a scientist.
She was not alone.
Kristal White, who will be senior next school year at Hallandale High School, said she always wanted to be a neonatologist.
“I’m vice president of the Health Careers Program at school,” she said while taking a break from a demonstration in physical therapy.
The idea of physical therapy is interesting, too, White, 17, said. “But I love babies and would hate the idea of not doing something I always wanted to do.”
Even the prospect of up to 14 more years of schooling will not daunt her, she said.
For many of these teens, the medical profession offers not only the potential for self-fulfillment, but also a good material life.
Crystal Mirabilio, 17, who lives on Marco Island south of Naples, said she is “at the stage where you need to know what you want to do.”
She said she looked online, “and I read where, by the year 2010, medical people are going to be paid more than any other profession.”
A physical therapist told students that many could expect to begin earning $50,000 per year after graduation.
Leonard Bryant, 17, a resident of Immokalee in Collier County and a junior counselor at the camp, said the potential money was a big part of what drove him to apply and attend the camp the previous year.
“I’m into business, not medicine,” he said. “But I’ve been a science fanatic all my life. If it didn’t take so long to become an M.D., I might think about it, but I’m going to stick to administration.”
He said he plans to major in business administration and help run an osteopathic hospital.
Senior counselor Irfan Siddiqui, 23, of Pembroke Pines, described his and other counselors’ roles as “big brothers” to the teens who attended the camp.
Siddiqui, in his second year of medical school at Nova, said he had wanted to be a doctor since he attended Ely High School in Pompano Beach, and the Nova program helped decide it for him.
Junior counselor Higgins Sanvil, 18, said the program offers teens a unique opportunity to “taste test” different medical fields. It also helped confirm for him his wish to become a pediatrician.
Sanvil, a graduate of Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, plans to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville this fall and take classes in pre-med.
Sanvil touted his love of children, and proudly stated the goal echoed by several other teens attending the program: “I’m going to be respected,” he said.