Paul's second trip to Haiti (cont.)

This is Wadlene whom I remember well from our first visit to Haiti.  She arrived at Baptist Haiti Mission nine days after the earthquake.  During this time she was at another facility with little or no care.  As things began to slow a bit here after the first week, we sent word out that we could accept other earthquake victims from outlying facilities.  She arrived, like many others, in the back of a truck that bumped up the hill to the hospital.  When I first met Wadlene, she was one of many who had been filing through the O.R. where we were racing too care for as many people as possible.  I immediately started in with the usual pre-anesthesia interview questions in a mechanical, tired-after-all-this-work type way.  Her answers were difficult to sort out and not linear or direct.  A simple question like, "do you have any medicine allergies," for example, was just not registering.  My medical student translator interjected that he had seen AIDS patients in his (limited) experience act this way and he was sure she was infected with HIV.

Looking back now I see that it was the Lord who, at that moment, helped me to do something a bit uncharacteristic for me and especially in this setting.  I slowed down and considered where and from what she had just come.  All I knew at this point was that, indeed, nine days had past and this woman who lay before me was still untreated and had been waiting all this time for any type of help.  So, through my interpreter, I asked her what her experience had been up to this point.  Suddenly, something clicked in her mind and I could see it clearly in her face.  She recounted that she been in her kitchen cooking when her building crumbled around her.  Her children where in another room and perished in the quake.  Incredible!  It all made since at this moment.  Here she was, suffering for over a week with limited or no care like pain medicine or basic hygiene with a broken arm and leg caring for herself in utter despair at the loss of all of her family!

I started again with the doctor stuff emphasizing that she was important and that we wanted to help her feel better and begin the healing process.  Still terrified, physically hurting, and emotionally spent we moved to the O.R. where she underwent the first stages of repair for her injuries.  Shortly after this our team left and, though her memory remained, I didn't expect to see her again.  Well, upon our arrival, one of the first people I saw was Wadlene!  She had remained nameless to me up to this point.  We again met in the O.R. again to further care for her left femur fracture.  I have since learned that, during her time at the hospital, she has put her trust in Christ as her Savior and Lord and continues to heal from her injuries.  Several days ago she went outside for the first time since the earthquake and enjoyed some rays.  We even gave her one of the "sonset" radios to encourage her to get out of bed and outside to charge the thing with its solar cells while listening!  Please pray for continued healing both physically and emotionally for Wadlene.  Further, we have heard rumors that one of her daughters may still be alive.  Pray for their reunion!

Here is another picture of Tilisier today.  He is the young man who suffered a fracture of the front of his skull then underwent a surgical closure.  He continues to heal and you can see that some of the swelling has left his eye.  We hope to get him out of bed tomorrow and outside where we will also give  him a radio.  Please pray for his continued healing.

Paul's second trip to Haiti (cont.)

Today we did some disaster tourism.  You may recognize these photos of the presidential palace in Port au Prince.  How different seeing it live and in person!  The destruction was much more striking! Many buildings crumbled starting with the failure of second story as you see in the palace.  The second floor failed then those above pancaked down upon it.  Some buildings look almost unbroken but are one story less!

Some were reduced to rubble juxtaposed with others which were untouched.

Haiti still suffers from lack of replacement construction to house the thousands of homeless.  Construction has begun on many fronts but it will be quite some time before it really makes a bit of a dent in the need.

Paul's second trip to Haiti

What an interesting turn of events!  When we were here the first time we all spoke of how we wanted to come back several weeks or months later to follow up on our patients.  This follow up trip was originally planned for earlier this month conflicting with our plans of  hosting a group from the States.  With that I forgot about it.  At the last minute they changed the dates to the day after our work team left so...here I am, back in Haiti working at Baptist Haiti Mission approximately 2 months later.  Now that I have a computer with me and this cool blog I will try to keep a running update of my daily experiences.

We arrived in Port au Price at about 2pm on Saturday, March 20, this time flying Copa Airlines, a commercial flight.  We were greeted by the banjo band you see below plucking out a spirited little tune that was short and continually repeating.  What a big difference from the first time!

 We were taken to a warehouse that served as customs, baggage claim, and immigration.  Thankfully all of our bags arrived with us and we made the trek to the top of the mountain arriving at Baptist Haiti Mission later that afternoon.  It feels strangely home-like and almost as if I hadn't left.  We have several surgeries planned for tomorrow.  One of which is to remove the hardware from Yonel's right arm.  You will remember him as the 12 year old shepherd boy who, while tending his sheep, suffered a crush injury of his right arm and leg.  He is healing great! His wonderful, bright spirit demonstrates the joy of the Lord Jesus!  He has won the hearts of all those here at the mission compound where he has been since the earthquake.  Unfortunately his mother, also pictured below with Yonel and me, is suffering from terminal breast cancer that has spread to her lungs and she is not expected to survive much longer.  Pray for her, Yonel and his siblings who also lost their father in the earthquake.

Today we started a regular schedule and did 4 surgeries.  Yonel's surgery went well and he now has a cast where his pins were along with a leg cast to help improve his overall mobility.  Below is today's picture of us caring for another young man with a broken leg.  The surgeons are finishing the fitting of the cast while he is under some light sedation.

Tuesday, March 23 Dr. Wolff broke the slowing afternoon schedule when he announced that he needed my help urgently to examine and close a head wound in an 11 year old child.  The boy had fallen from something earlier in the morning and fractured the front of his skull above his nose and had brain leaking out of the wound (I'll spare you by not including the gory picture.)  A quick exam revealed a somnolent child in urgent need of care.  Below we are pictured doing "brain surgery" which in this case consisted of examining the fracture site, reapproximating the bones and closing the thick lining over the brain with some surgical mesh.  He woke up easily, praise the Lord, and we moved him to our make shift ICU which is the pre and post op area just outside the OR.  He continued to improve over night and moved him to a regular bed the following day.  I'll keep you posted on his progress.

 

Here he is today, Wednesday, March 24 resting comfortably.  Please pray for him as he continues to recover and that he will not contract an infection from his brain wound or develop a cerebrospinal fluid leak.

Farah is one of the sweet ladies we helped in January by putting on an external "fixator" that is holding the bones of her  leg together and aligned while they heal.  You can see it on her left leg as black rods on each side.  It continues all the way to her left hip.  This morning we encouraged her and several other women up and out of bed to walk for some physical therapy.  We even joked with them that they were racing against one another from one end of the room to the other as we cheered them on.  You can see her competition behind her right shoulder...an elderly women with a healing left femur fracture.

Daniela was injured in the earthquake when a wall fell on her right leg.  We got to know her early on and managed to resist doing an amputation of her badly mangled extremity with much exposed bone.  We are grateful to the Lord for leading us with His wisdom in not proceeding with an amputation!  After much wound care by the various teams over the last two months that included a skin graft, you can see that her skin is now healed and she is walking!

Here is Madam Kafa again still hard at work in the OR!  At this moment she is ooo-ing and ahhhh-ing as she has just received a "SonSet".  These are solar powered radios pre-programed to receive up to 5 local FM Christian radio stations.  This is one of the many ministries of HCJB.  One of our team members brought 100 of them to give out to those we meet who are interested in learning more about the Gospel and growing in their faith in Christ by listening to radio broadcasts.

PEF Team - Monday

The team had a busy first day here in Shell.  They started bright and early by leading chapel at the Nate Saint school at 8:15!  Margaret led songs and the whole group did a skit about Zacheas which Bill and Aime explained.  The chapel pictures didn't come out very well, but here is a picture of the students of the Nate Saint school.

 After chapel the team headed to the Casa de Fe work site to do construction.

The afternoon was taken up by more construction and PE classes at both the Casa de Fe school and the Nate Saint school.

Today (Tuesday) promises to be a busy day, but we will post pictures when we can.  Thanks for your prayers.

Paul's Haiti Photos

Here are some photos that will give you a better idea about my time in Haiti. We left Ecuador Thursday morning January 14 arriving in Florida that afternoon when we met with a Samaritan's Purse team. Here we are waiting to leave that evening.


Our team from HCJB consisted of (from left to right):  me (the anesthesiologist from Shell), Sheila Leach (nurse and head of HCJB's disaster response team from Quito), Leonardo Febres (orthopedic surgeon from Quito) and...


(still left to right): Eckehart Wolff (orthopedic and general surgeon from Shell), Steve Nelson (family physican from Quito), Mark Nelson (family physician from Quito), and Martin Harrison (water engineer and head of HCJB's community development office in Quito.)


The following morning, Friday, January 15 we were cleared to leave and then arrived in Haiti at about 10am. Here are all in our seats ready for "blast off".

We unloaded the plane in just 9 minutes so its spot could be used for another plane bringing relief teams.



Early that afternoon we arrived at Baptist Haiti Mission, our home base for the stay in Haiti.  Pictured is their church and to the right the edge of the hosptial can be seen.


We met first with the hospital staff and had a brief tour of the facilities.  Dr. Bernard is pictured in the middle holding a piece of paper.  He, along with Claud, a senior level medical student (not pictured) had individually admitted and cared for all of the wounded until we arrived.  At this point, we were told, many of the hospital's physicians were unaccounted for.

We then set about triaging and cataloging the approximately 300 patients at this 100 bed facility.  The wards, hallways and meeting rooms were packed with patients on hospital beds and matresses on the floor.

The women's ward.

Most patients, we found, had injuries to their arms and legs.  Significant about any disaster is that all injuries occur at the same moment.  So, they all had been waiting for at least 3 days, many of whom had open and now grossly infected fractures and wounds.  Pictured is a patient with a "cast" to immobalize a fractured limb made of cardboard and string.  We saw many of these which are remarkably effective.


Here is one of the two operating rooms at Baptist Haiti Mission.  I mostly used this one.  Notice the two monitors sitting side-by-side on the top of the anesthesia machine.  These are the two which were donated to the hospital director and miraculously discovered when the previous one gave out.



We set to work in the OR later that Friday night when we began our first operation.  Here I am hard at work anesthetizing one of the many patients with fractures.


A common scene early in our time there before the flood of  supplies flowed.  Eckehart Wolff (left) and Leo Febres (right) worked with sterile gloves only stabalizing open fractures with the "pin and plaster" technique.

Sheila Leech (left) served as the operating room circulating nurse.  Dr. Leo Febres is examining a wound while I'm starting an IV and being watched by the translation team of Haitian medical students.

  

One of my little patients who has a fractured femur has just received an injection of anesthesia medicine and we are waiting for it to take effect and then wheel her into the OR.  On the left is Stefano, the grandson of Madam Kafa, a medical student who helped us translate.

Pre- and postoperative wound care was a massive, endless job that the family physicians from our team with the aid of many other volunteers attended to daily.

Benjamin, pictured with his fiancée, is on staff at Baptist Haiti Mission and served as an excellent translator.

Madam Kafa is an 83 year old grandmother who has been working at Baptist Haiti Mission.  She tirelessly wrapped and steralized surgical packs for us as she has done for the hospital for decades!



Nicole usually works for several NGOs that serve Haiti but served diligently as our operating room coordinator and translator.  She kept the flow of patients in and out of the OR going.



Chaplain Jack of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. spent countless hours with patients and their families while in the hospital.  Pictured here is the shepherd boy who was injured by falling rocks during the earthquake.  He trusted Christ as Savior while in the hospital and is receiving a children's Bible from Jack.



This is Vanessa whom I mentioned in our update.  When she came to the operating room the first time for care on her left arm, we were told that the lemon around her neck was a symbol of voodoo.  However, upon a subsequent visit someone else mentioned that it was nothing more than a remedy to dry up a mother's milk.  Along these lines we questioned her and found out that her 11 month old nursing child had perished in the earthquake.  This is why she wore the lemon.  Wow!  Heartbreaking!  In later days, through the chaplains' ministry, she trusted Christ as her Savior.  Gracias a Dios!

One of the hospital chaplains leads the patients in a song of worship.  This room shares a wall with the OR area and we could hear them singing as we worked in surgery.

 Knowing that many of our disaster relief colleagues were living in a much more spartan manner, our team was grateful for our accommodations in a guest house on the mission grounds.

Martin Harrison served as the water engineer for our team and is posing in front of the portable water treatment plant which he installed on the mission compound.  Fish pond water was amazingly transformed into drinking water by the gallons per hour!

And here it is!  The green pond that Martin used as his water source to make the clean drinking water.  His comment on this was, "The fish will just have to share a bit and learn to swim a little closer to each other."

Upon our return to the airport, its grounds were now covered by tent villages of aid workers of many nationalities.  The one in the foreground is Turkey.

The airport terminal was considered unsafe to use so ticket counters and check-in stations were relocated outside.

Evidence of severe structual damage to the airport terminal.

Our ride home courtesy of the generous donations through Samaritan's Purse.