Breathe
By Juana Ramírez
With a Puerto Rican mother and Ecuadorian father -part of the more than 60 million Latinos living in the United States-, little Sarah, at the age of 14, was already working in the afternoons at a pharmacy in New Jersey, and the experience of living closely the problems of access to medical care and medicines, especially in the Hispanic community, would mark her from then on. Later, while studying Biological Sciences, she joined the HIV-positive children's program at a University Hospital in New Brunswick as a volunteer, and there her life purpose took shape.
Meanwhile, in Patagonia, the southernmost tip of the continent, a girl was growing up in an unusual home: an oncologist father and a lawyer mother, three sisters and two brothers. A home where men were in the minority and chores were equally distributed. A mother who was not always at home, because she worked without receiving complaints from anyone. She saw her father as a giant, not only because of his great stature, but also because people often greeted him in the street, many even thanking him for saving their lives; and although it did cross her mind to become a doctor, she chose to study Public Accounting in Buenos Aires while working as an accounting analyst in a foreign trade company. She did not know then that health would find her irremediably, even if she had decided not to enter medical school.
