Quake Stories

Some stories from my first few days of clinic work....


Michael's Miracle


On Day 8 after the earthquake, a miraculous thing happened!!! A 5 year old boy arrived at our clinic (along with NBC) right after his family pulled him out of the rubble that had been their home! And he was absolutely fine! All that he needed was a good meal and a whole lot of water. NBC is calling him Miracle Michael, and here's the link to his story:


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/34944333#34944333


On the morning of Day 9, my first patient of the day was an Amercian (kinda fun to start my day speaking English). He works with an American mining company located near Peti Goave, and they are using their large earth moving equipment to attempt to clear some of the rubble of buildings. The previous morning, he had been about to start clearing a home. As he pointed his large machine at what had previously been a 2 story home, a frantic mother and father rushed to his side. Using gestures, they got his attention to show pictures of two sweet children, their 5 year old son and 8 year old daughter, still buried under the debris. They begged him for a little more time.


That morning, they dug out Miracle Michael and his sister. Michael, as you know, came to us, and his sister went to the hospital down the road. What a truly miraculous morning!


A Cup of Cold Water


Dr. Bill was a wonderful ER doc from Michigan who joined our team for a few days. He ran our splinting and casting center for a little while, and as he headed hack to Port Au Prince to fly out, was overwhelmed by the generous spirit of our sweet Haitian neighbors. 


He was sitting in the back of a pick up truck, stuck in traffic. An old man, with dusty feet and tattered clothes, perched at the edge of the truck asking about water. Dr. Bill didn't have any, so he sadly told that man that he had none. 


Traffic inched forward, and the old man shuffled off. He returned to the gridlocked truck a few minutes later, still dirty and dressed in rags but now holding a cup of water... for the doctor who didn't have any. 


What an incredible group of people I have the privilege of serving!


More stories to come....

The Setting-- What Life In Haiti Is Like Now

Hi, again!

I just wanted to send out a quick update that I am well and safe! I spent the last couple of weeks  working in a clinic just outside of Port Au Prince and then running a guest house for the teams rotating through. Whew! It was great and tiring and exhilarating work! And thankfully, it's my turn on the rotation schedule for a break! I'll be out for 2 weeks to rest up, and I'll try to post stories and pictures every few days as I process and grieve for the incredible people of Haiti.

Let me tell you a little more about the clinic today, and I'll try to write stories of my sweet patients over the next few days...

I met up with a medical team that flew in from Michigan-- what an incredible group of people to work with! We have established a clinic in Peti Goave, which is the town next to the epicenter of the earthquake; it's 40 miles outside of Port Au Prince. We have averaged 120-300 patients each day. We did wound care, quake injuries, and general medical complaints. We saw obvious closed fractures, with forearms bent at a 45 degree angle. Almost everyone that I saw the first day had a cement wall fall on them. We saw wounds that had been sutured (stitched up) on the first day, but had not been cleaned first. So, we removed the stitches on days 8 and 9 after the quake, and the wounds fell open and we scrubbed ROCKS out of them! I would start debriding (removing non-viable tissue) on a small dime sized wound, and by the time I had reached viable tissue, the wound was the size of a fifty cent piece and down to the bone. We started without even local anesthetic, and as awful as it was to cut away skin with a scalpel without any numbing medicine, it was so vital to do that to save people's arms and legs from gangrene and to save their lives. I assisted with several finger and toe amputations. We did awful, necessary things to save lives. 

All of the people in Peti Goave are living in tents made from sheets in the street, as no one trusts the structural stability of their homes if its still standing. The cooler evening temperates and the stress of the quake are contributing to a rise in general medical problems-- we're seeing malaria and typhoid along with the normal hypertension and diabetes. Normal medical clinics are not functioning, so primary care is half of what we've seen this week. 

There is a hospital less than a mile down the road. Currently, there are mainly Cubans there who speak very little Creole. It's almost completely out of supplies. We had a surgeon here this week who was invited over to do several surgeries. He brought supplies with him from our clinic. 

We camped out at the clinic in very primitive conditions. Our amazing hosts at the clinic/camp site are the Haitian general superintendent's wife and several Wesleyan church members. They do laundry and cook. There is no running water. They turn a generator on for a few hours each evening, and after that, there is no electricity. There are rats in the building that we slept in. 

I found that the most valuable traits for this week were flexiblity and creativity, in both the living and working environment. When you do not have the medical supplies or the streile environment of your hospital back home, you have to be ready to creatively treat and adapt to the problem. All the while, we tried to be as compassionate as we could, but still be prepared to be flexible in our treatment plans.

What a crazy, incredible experience! So, that sets the background for more stories... more to come soon!

A Place in Port Au Prince

Hi, all!

I got into Port Au Prince 2 days ago. Things are okay here. It's hard to say "good" in light of a 7.0 earthquake and the devastation that follows, but it's a much better situation for us than I had imagined. 

Things are getting better on the streets... Things are slowly getting cleaned up. There are no more piles of bodies in the street, nor bodies lined up outside of houses for identification, like we had heard reports of earlier last week. There are still dead trapped in houses, which you can identify by the stench. Everyone walks around with a mask on. 

But we have felt very safe. We're staying at Carl and Maya's. We gathered good information from the US Embassy that if we show up at the Embassy and ask to be evacuated, they will. That's a nice thing to know just in case. 

We drove through several places in the city today on our way to clinic. Many buildings have pancaked down, but they have cleared the rubble out of the road. There are white people, relief workers and UN, in soooo many places! This is the safest I've ever felt in Port before. Part of it is probably because I'm with a big group of white people and since I speak more Creole now, but the people are also very subdued.

Today, we saw people out walking around doing normal looking things. Some of the markets are open. Several gas stations are open with long lines.

We set up a clinic in Carfoufe yesterday. Our largest Wesleyan church is there, some of it is still standing. That area was very hard hit. We had the clinic in a classroom in the Wesleyan school. We had a bunch of help from people in the church, and they were wonderful!!

The sickest patients showed up for the first few hours. Probably the worst was a girl with a broken femur and broken wrist. Mainly, we cleaned wounds and splinted broken bones. We saw about 100 patients all together. Dr. Kris Thede, one of our missionary docs from the north of Haiti, joined our group yesterday morning, and it was so good to see her! Mis Viro, the Haitian nurse practicioner that I worked with in the hospital on LaGonave, has been here at Carl's, so she came with us too. It was good.

We did a lot of wound debridement, and gangrene is already starting to set in just a little. I spent 30 minutes carefully cleaning a wound and removing the nonviable tissue on one young guy. A piece of his house fell on this ankle where the wound was. His parents and all 3 of his siblings died as the house came down. He alone escaped and is now homeless. He was so brave while I cleaned him up with no anestehtic. We talked for a little while about how God has a plan for him, as he alone was spared, and also how he came for medical treatment at a critical time. Hopefully, with debridement and antibiotics, he will live to tell his story.

Much love, and I just wanted to report on what we're up to. We finished our clinic an hour earlier than planned since we ran out of patients, so we're hoping to link up with Bobby Boyer, a family friend from back in SC who pastors a church here, today and see if we can help out in their clinic. Dr. Kris also suggested that we get in touch with other Wesleyan churches and see if they need clinics there like we did today. We'll see what tomorrow holds.

Thanks for your prayers,

~diane

We're SAFE!!!!

Dearest friends and family,

I am safe!! Please keep Haiti in your prayers as we just suffered a devastating 7.3 on the Richter scale earthquake this afternoon. The focus of the quake was just outside of the capital, Port Au Prince, demolishing parts of that large city. The main hospital for the country was leveled. Many government buildings collapsed, and the airport is currently closed. Thousands of casualties are suspected. I live on an island off the mainland, and thus far, we seem to faring well. The missionaries here are all okay. I sewed up some minor wounds, and we've heard reports of some structural damage to buildings. Our cell phones are out of service, but otherwise, most things are okay. We are still feeling the aftershocks. My fridge is on wheels and moved 6 inches away from the wall during the big quake. 

It's dangerous to cross the sea at night, so tomorrow morning we, the LaGonave missionaries, will see where we can help. Please pray with us that God will open the way before us in Port. Please join me in praying that the Lord will open a way for me to use my medical training. It's so hard to be so close to tragedy and suffering and yet still too far away to help.

Thank you! While I wrote this note, I've heard a voodoo parade pass by. I've also heard a nearby church singing hymns. Please keep us in your prayers!!

~Diane

The Belated Christmas Post

Hi, friends!

This is the link to the long awaited Christmas-y post! It almost made it up here in time for the epiphany! :o)

http://chariteservant.blogspot.com/2010/01/urgent-life.html

Happy reading!

Answers to Unprayed Prayers

Merry belated Christmas and Happy 2010!!! I hope that you had a wonderful holiday season and enjoying a great start to the new year! I had a wonderful, whirlwind 2 weeks in the States, savoring time with my wonderful boyfriend, spending Christmas with his sweet family, crashing the ER for a brief visit and dropping off (really really strong and good) Haitian coffee and wishing that we all had more time to visit, enjoying time in colonial Williamsburg with my encouraging parents and aunt and uncle and cousin (and fellowshipping in the car on the 8 hour trip it took to get there :o), and being a part of my gorgeous best friend's beautiful, joyous wedding. Whew, what a great and speedy trip!


I returned to my Haitian home this week and was so blessed as God answered a desire of mine that I hadn't even started to pray for yet! I have been compiling a "wish list" for the hospital here. At the top of the list are necessities that I feel are urgently needed, like lab tests for basic serum electrolytes and liver function tests and a working x-ray machine. The other items are more dreamy... things that would help to elevate my hospital to first world standards. I dream big. :o) 


On the ultimate wish list is a physical therapist. That request seemed so far away from fruition that I hadn't even started to pray for it yet. And I think that the Lord may already have the answer on the way! Wow! God is so ... amazing! And nice!! (and indescribable-- it makes even gregarious me speechless!!) 


When I got back to the island on Wednesday, I got to meet a wonderful short-term team, who were finishing up their stay. One of the ladies is a physical therapist from Canada who's seriously considering serving in Haiti for 6-12 months to train Haitian medical personnel to work as a PT!!! She rode back on the boat with me to discuss the possibilities and realities of serving here, and the whole time my heart was singing to think that God might be answering a prayer that I hadn't yet prayed!!!! 


Wow! It's good to be back.