Greetings everyone!
Day 2 in Haiti was a smashing success.
The medical director here, Dr. Eduorado, is a really amazing guy (who
thankfully speaks really great English) and all of the staff love and respect
him. The other doctor I've been working with, Dr. Josef, says that she
learned to love medicine from working under him. She trained in Cuba and
is in the process of doing her residency, part of her training here in Haiti.
She says she doesn't speak any English, but we've carried on
conversations and I've been able to understand the diagnosis, pathology, and
treatment for every patient....so I tell her she's doing just fine. She
speaks French, Creole and Spanish fluently, so every once in a while my broken
Spanish serves me well enough to fill in her English gaps. She has been
an amazing teacher as well. When I first spoke with everyone via e-mail
before the trip it was very unclear what I would be doing in the hospital;
thankfully, I had been communicating with the director of the hospital, who's a
lawyer....the medical director has a better understanding of things :) I
told Dr. Josef when I met with her today that I really wanted to learn how they
do medicine here in Haiti....for one, we see diseases that either don't exist
in the states (like cholera, typhoid, malaria) or to an extent that we usually
would not see them (like draining tuberculosis infected pus from an abdomen),
but even the diseases that we commonly see, we treat them very differently.
They do have an impressive set up here -- their lab can run CBCs with
differentials, HIV tests (funny story in a minute), as well as some other basic
labs, you get the point -- and it enables us to do more obviously than if the
clinic was just set up in the villages as we've done in the past. But
they don't have the luxury of checking what types of bacteria are infecting
every single person, and if they have a fever and show other signs of
infection, they pump them full of whatever combo of antibiotics they can that
will cover everything. They are very receptive to teaching me how they do
medicine here and are grateful (and expressed it) that I want to learn a
"different" way of medicine -- obviously in the states we have
unlimited resources essentially, and we can do pretty much anything.
Here, they obviously don't have it, so their medicine sometimes doesn't
even seem evidence based, and I'm sure many American doctors would scoff or
cringe, but they do what they can and the people thank them for it. The
medical director today asked if I would like to work with Dr. Josef to
"exchange our medical knowledge," to which I replied, "of course,
though I'm sure she will be able to exchange more valuable information than I
will." Knowing that I want to do this kind of work in my future,
it's amazing to learn from people who are effectively doing it and see how to
manage diseases with limited resources. Also, have to say, the Salvation
Army has a very amazing and well respected set up here, with overall a great
nursing and doctoral staff. Sure, the OB/GYN room looks like something
out of the Sheriff of Nottingham's dungeon and it's not the cleanest hospital room
I've ever been in, but they are doing amazing work and the community gathers to
support them. It's amazing how the families of the sick cook, clean,
change bandages, etc. for all of the patients here, and they are so willing to
pay for their medications. To them, if it's free it's clearly not of
value, so they want to pay something. Today we treated a girl with a UTI
with IV fluids, some antibiotics, and a few other things for malnutrition, and
I think the total was around $3.00 -- but they are so willing to pay and so
appreciative of the services. Okay, that funny story (funny to me anyway)
-- Dr. Josef was trying to tell me about this disease that is extremely common
around the world called SIDA.....to which I replied, I have no clue. She
insisted that I knew it and that it has become increasingly more common.
Then she said that they run the VIH test for it and surely I knew what
that was.....to which, again, I was like, um no clue. Then she wrote it
down VIH/SIDA -- and was "really? we treat with anti-retrovirals?"
ahhhhh, light bulb. "You mean HIV/AIDS?" And she
tells me that in French they write the letters in a different order......yeah,
that took about 5 minutes of me staring at her and her thinking that her English
truly was bad.
All in all I worked about 12 hours today, and
if any emergencies happen overnight I'll run down to help them. The bus
drivers are so crazy that people get hit fairly often. I may see a baby
delivered in the next few days too, which I'm sure will be ever so different
than at Rush. And oh yeah, the food again is just insane. I swear
that all Minel's wife Denise does is cook all day for us. I woke up and
she started cooking breakfast, which we ate around 8:30, then she started
making lunch which we ate at 1:30ish, then she started on dinner which we ate
late around 8:00.....I'm sure she's not in there all day but it sure seems like
it! The food is just simply amazing and I'm actually eating better here
in Haiti than I do at home....probably cause I cook for myself so PBJs sound
easy enough most days.
If you've actually read through this, congrats.
I'll keep sending updates each day and if you're annoyed, just delete
them :)
Prayer:
- That I continue to learn and effectively
treat our patients, and that maybe God can help me find ways to help add to
their practice and not come across as "american snobbery"
- I head to the Children's home tomorrow for a
bit to check it out. Plan is to do wellness checks for the 40 kids next
week sometime before I leave, so tomorrow will just be a taste of that
- Everyone here is so crazy sick, even the
doctors are hacking away.....I had been dealing with some chronic bronchitis
before I left, which I thought had cleared up, with the 80-something degree
weather increase and lots of sick people I'm starting to cough a bit. I
started a course of Cipro when I got here for prophylaxis against travelers
diarrhea and so hopefully it will help prevent any crazy infection, but there's
lots of viral stuff floating around here, so pray I stay relatively healthy
- Language barrier is super tough overall --
today some of the maintenance crew sat me down and gave me a Creole
lesson....basics like hi, how are you, my name is, what's your name - which was
awesome. They really want to help me learn, but I suck at learning
languages, so pray that maybe God rewires my brain or something and I can start
to learn these. If I'm gonna work in Haiti and the DR I really should
become somewhat proficient in Spanish, French, and Creole
Thanks everyone. I'll update you more
tomorrow!
-Aaron Tabor
No comments:
Post a Comment