I still don't like cats, but at least they're better than the alternative!

David knows that I don't really care for cats. I think that it goes back to a childhood memory of being viciously mauled by a feline at the tender age of 3. David, my wonderful boyfriend, and his optimistic family like to pretend that someday I will like cats. I'm still not a fan, but I'm hoping that today I really do have one in my house. 
What follows is an email that I sent David (and his awesome mom) describing the events of this afternoon...

Darling David...

I think that I might actually have a cat living under my roof!! Today I heard something really loud traipsing around in the attic and I saw something gray and fuzzy pop out of the ceiling tile cracks!!! (the earthquake and aftershocks have been shuffling around my ceiling tiles) Justine told me that we have cats who live behind our house who sometimes get into the attic and chase the rats! I'm actually hoping that I saw a cat paw...that or we have really, really big rats!!!! I'm putting up my mosquito netting tent right now just in case to serve as an extra rat-barrier!

Never a dull moment around here!

~your diane, the cat-in-the-attic-girl

Just a small moment in the life of this missionary girl!

P.S.-- There's also a goat out in the yard... Maybe there's a goat in my attic?!?!

All in a Day's Love...

I know, I know, the phrase is usually "all in a day's work"... but today I don't feel like I worked as much as I was given opportunities to love and be loved. And sometimes love hurts, if the ones you love are hurting, or hungry, or sick, or dirty, or lonely. 

Today's opportunities of love included...

~meeting the rest of Esther's family. I spent a lovely hour visiting in their home. I was so humbled to learn that they pray for me daily, that God would bless me and that He would protect me. They are very concerned for me that I live alone as that's a foreign concept to many Haitians. Many families live in a one room building or at least have several family members in the same bedroom. It was sweet to be loved on by them, and I am humbled to hear them pray that God would bless me, as I see them working so hard just to feed and clothe their family.

~hugging orphans. I had the incredible privilege of going to the orphanage today to take care of some sick kiddo's. As I climbed the steep hill to the orphanage, I could hear the children laughing and playing. It was beautiful. While there, Mari Tares, a sweet little girl of five with red highlights in her hair from malnutrition, climbed up into my arms to just hug me and smile at me. I want to keep her and let her know she's loved every moment of every day (and to stuff her full of yummy protein rich foods). They have 7 new kids there now, all orphaned during the recent earthquake. 

~treating sick kids. While there, a couple of the kids needed some medical attention. I had arrived with several meds, but I need to go back tomorrow as I realized that another girl has a fever and another has a wound that needs further care. Madame Soliet, the amazing orphanage director, looked tired. She has 58 children and only 5 workers. She made time in her day to sit with me and talk. How sweet! In the midst of telling me about the orphans, a deaf man came to the door. She welcomed him in, greeted him (by waving, and he saluted me-- how sweet!), and mentioned to me that sometimes he seems very hungry and she feeds him. She proceeded to tell me about an asylum for the very poor in our town. The people who live there have no family (kind of a rare thing in Haitian culture) and no jobs. She told me of how dirty it is and how hungry they are. And out of their meager stores from the orphanage, she tries to share food with them. She looked me in the eye and said, "We have nothing. But they need it more." Wow. I am amazed at her generosity. I am overwhelmed by the need.

~Visiting the very poor. After the orphanage, a friend and I went to the Asylum. We were greeted very enthusiastically by an orphan. He's about 13, has cognitive deficits (doesn't know his own name or age), and a crippled left foot and arm. He ran up to us, grinned, and hugged me so tightly, leaving a dusty print on my shirt and an imprint on my heart. They heard that we were nurses, so they brought out a very thin, frail, elderly woman with a fever and a man with a horribly swollen leg for us to look at. I have been told that the town supplies this home with food. I hope so. I feel that my time with them is not yet done.

Sometimes the need is overwhelming here. And so is the sweet spirit of these people... a family struggling to get by that prays for a little missionary and worries about her, orphans who laugh and hug and play so freely, and a crippled, orphaned boy who runs over to a strange white girl to hug her.

All in a day's love. 

Update

Hi, friends!


Just a quick update on life here! I realized today that I haven't written in a while...


It sure has been busy! But I usually prefer it that way. :o) I'm back home in LaGonave, and it's nice to unpack and settle in... to my little home, my work, and my relationships. 


Last weekend I hosted a surgical team from Canada. They were a great group and did 18 cases in 3.5 days! Wow! We sure were busy! I assisted with a C-section of twins, and the anesthesiologist taught me how to do spinal anesthesia! Otherwise, there's only one person here trained to do that, and when she was gone one day, an OB had to do a C-section with only local anesthetic, which is a good deal less effective. 


Since then, I learned how to run our guest house and am flying solo in its management for a few days. That's been fun and certainly keeps one busy! In the last 2 days, we've had people here from Canada, France, Scotland, the US, and missionaries from other parts of Haiti. Wow! The dinner conversations have been very eclectic and interesting! I found out from the Scottish guys that I'm famous over there! When I was working in the relief clinic in Peti Goave, they arrived one day like a Christian calvary. They swooped in with a ton of medicines and equipment, sweet smiles and sunny spirits, and swooped back out. While there, one of the guys made a quick video tape of me caring for a patient. I talked him through what I was doing, and they left. He used that video as a part of fundraising dinner in Scotland, and they raised over $100,000!!! Wow!!!


I've also been coordinating the arrival of thousands of pounds of donated medicines. It's been incredible to watch God provide for the needs of my hospital as we are no longer able to buy medicines since our supply line disintegrated with the earthquake. 


We're still experiencing "small" (4.8) aftershocks. Last night, I couldn't tell if my ceiling was shaking from those or from the rats racing around in my attic! Never a dull moment around here!


My Creole lessons will be starting in earnest again. I love to talk anyways, but language skills will be invaluable over these next few months of coordination and running the guest house. My old friend Esther (the 16 year old who hung out with me in Port in November) is coming over tomorrow to visit and drink lemonade and eat cookies and teach me Creole! I'm so excited to visit with her again!


One last thought... This morning my devos were on Eph 3:14-21, and it talks about knowing the length and width and height and depth of the love of God which passes knowledge. What a miraculous thing to know His love, which is so incredibly great that it overwhelms our capacity to know things! THAT'S how much God loves us! Wow!!!

Charite Thoughts

A couple of new posts at one of my other blogs... a eulogy, some miracles, life's rippling effects...

Check em out at:

http://chariteservant.blogspot.com/

Quake Stories, Part Twa

I remembered a story today; a story that I had not thought of since it happened on January 17th.

It was our first day of clinic work, before we teamed up with the group from Michigan, before we set up shop in Peti Goave, before we had ample local anesthesia. 

I have been amazed at how my patients acted. How would Americans act under the same situation? How would I respond to someone debriding my open wounds without even a drop of lidocaine?!

Very few people just murmur... it's usually either shrieks of pain or an impermeable facade of stoicism. The lady I remembered today was the former. 

She had a wound that needed debridement. It was a 4 cm lower leg area of necrotic tissue that had to be cleaned up to prevent further spread... cleaned and cut away and dressed without even a dash of lidocaine. 

And she sobbed. And howled. And jerked. I focused on just working as fast as humanly possible to make her suffering end quickly. Dr. Kris, our awesome missionary doctor working with us, encouraged her with, "Kenbe kouraj, madam! Kouraj!" (Keep courage, lady! Courage!)

Dr. Kris then asked if she was a Christian, which the woman replied that she was. She was then encouraged to act like one! I'm not sure where that is in Scripture, but I agreed... and she was so brave after that! She quieted down and attempted to hold still. 

When I had finally finished sloughing off dried blood and dirt, removing nonviable tissue, and covering the now 8cm gaping wound with neosporin and gauze, I apologized profusely. My sweet, noisy patient grabbed my hand, pressed it to her cheek, and thanked me repeatedly. 

Wow. 

She lost so much-- members of her family, her home, and a few centimeters off her calf without anesthesia-- and her response was gratitude. I had so little to offer her in the face of such loss. I am humbled by her faith and her attitude.

Quake Stories, Part 2

As I prepared for a year of medical missions work in Haiti last November, I thought that what I was about to see was going to be bad. At the end of December, after 1/3 of the patients I had seen that month died, I realized that it was really bad. After the devastating 7.0 earthquake shook Port Au Prince, it was absolutely catastrophic.

In November, I tried to prepare for third world medicine by reading up on tropical diseases. In December, I began planning the implementation of a CME program to train and equip my Haitian coworkers in first world medicine so patients wouldn’t die of things that people don’t die from in America and so nurses would stop putting tongue depressors in the mouths of seizing patients. In January, I moved to Port to work in a disaster relief clinic.

A huge part of me wants to give you stories of hope after the quake... stories of life and love and the magnificent human spirit.
But I realized that I have been a little remiss... You also need to hear some of the horror and tragedy and heartbreak to receive a balanced picture of where I have been and what I have seen. Many of the news stories are true... stuff is bad. Horrific. Hellish. Heart-wrenching. 

Much of what you see on the news is true. Only worse. On the news, you don’t get a sense of the sights and smells. You can’t travel through Port, knowing from the stench which buildings still have dead bodies trapped under them. On the news, you don’t get to drive by the grocery store where you used to shop, realizing that the man who used to slice your cheese and teach you Creole is now trapped at his deli counter, crushed under 7 stories of concrete.

This is a tent city... it's now where people live. Even if a part of a house is still standing, many are not stable enough for people to live there again. And we're still experiencing aftershocks, so no one sleeps inside. Malaria and typhoid have less barriers as people live right next to one another and good water is scarce. The aftershocks still occur daily. You never feel completely safe... and you never sleep too deeply.

It looks like a bomb went off. So many buildings are crushed... Can you count the floors of this building? It had at least 5. 
Haitians usually wail when a loved one dies. It's a loud, haunting sound expressing deep hurt and anguish. I've only heard it once since the quake... The magnitude of death and destruction is so overwhelming that I'm not sure the grieving has even begun. 
Everyone lost someone. All of the people that I treated in the clinic also lost their homes. It's hard to wrap your brain and your heart around devastation on such a large scale. 

Our clinic was rough... Bare bones medical. You had to be creative and flexible to attempt to treat what came before you. Babies not eating because both their parents are dead. Everyone has a headache and a stomachache. Baby fingers that are black with gangrene and need to be removed. A strangulated hernia that needed surgery after a son lifted a cement wall off his mom only to find that she was already gone. New accidents, as a motorcycle driver gawks at the rubble and runs into a pedestrian. A little boy with an open head injury, grey matter peeking out, after he gets hit with a pick ax that was being used to dig bodies out of the rubble. 

We worked in an outdoor clinic, with tarps set up to catch mangoes and coconuts that fell with the aftershocks, attempting to not create more patients. Patients lined up by the hundreds every morning to be treated. Every morning, I had to scramble to get a small bucket of water to be able to splint fractures. Every morning, it was a quest to find a little bit of clean water to wash out wounds. 

This is the background stress of clinic work. After the first day, I had trouble asking each patient their story, as despair threatened to overwhelm me for the loss these sweet people have suffered.
Every patient had the same history. “A wall fell on me.” “This bulge (a strangulated hernia) showed up in my stomach after I lifted a wall off my mom, only to find out she was dead.” “I’m the only one left alive. I was in a hotel with 200 people for a conference.” 

The Lord told me that morning to slow down, to look at their faces and love them. A couple of days later, my interpreters (I found that I worked faster with using them and it was a good check for my Creole) told me that I was working “dousman,” a word that I knew to mean “slowly.” I was a little discouraged to hear that, but they quickly reassured me that I was not to change and that the people talked about me and loved me. The meaning of “dousman” that they meant was “sweetly” and “gently.” It was sweet for me to know that God can use a broken heart for His kingdom. I was able to pray with several patients, and all of those I treated received tracts.

My favorite patient was an 8 year old who showed up with a crushed injury. Her left hand and wrist had been smashed by a falling cement wall. She had a few scrapes that needed to be cleaned up and she stole a piece of my heart (I wonder if that's how moms feel when they put neosporin on boo-boo's). She has a great smile and a black eye, where debris had smacked her in the face. She was brave as I examined her hand for gangrene (none yet, thankfully!!) and scrubbed her scabs off to bandage her arm and then molded a sugar-tong splint into position. She came back for a recheck two days later, no signs of gangrene and arm healing so well! I whispered in her ear that I loved her and did she know that Jesus loves her, too? She smiled back at me, nodded, and gave me a huge one-armed hug! Her dad leaned over to tell me that she liked me, and also that she was going to the Dominican Republic the following day. My heart rejoiced that she could be headed somewhere safe, and I cautioned that she really needed x-rays. She gave me another hug and headed out, hopefully to safety. 
There is hope mingled into horror, healing in the midst of heartache.

How to HELP!!!!

Wanna be a part of disaster relief?
We (my team and I serving in Haiti) would love to have you come along with us as we care for earthquake victims. How to help:
1.) Prayer-- Your prayers have been powerful and effective... Thank you sooooo much for those!!
2.) Donate-- Another huge assistance is our disaster relief fund. Money translates into food, water, clothing, shelter, and medicines for quake victims. One hundred percent of the donations go directly to our clinic and missions stations to help those in need. For more info, please check out: 
http://www.wesleyan.org/doc/news_article?id=658&src=news


Thank you for all of your notes and encouraging words!! Those have been a huge blessing to me (I almost made that #3 of how you can help... I wouldn't complain if you wanted to write me notes/comments :).