Bonswa! Koman
ou ye? (Good evening! How are you? in Creole -- see....learning lol)
Day 4 is drawing to a
close down here, and it's actually been a pretty busy day. I'll start by
telling you about the church service I attended this morning. It was the
Salvation Army Church, which probably had a couple hundred people there this
morning. There are several churches in Fond-Des-Negres, a couple
Protestant and a couple Catholic ones. Even though I could not understand
a word of what was going on, it was an extremely moving and inspiring
experience. Their band consisted of keys, drums, bass, guitar, and a
trumpet section (Bob Clauss, I'm talking to you here....Chris can pass on the
message) and a very powerful lead female vocalist. If you're familiar
with the type of music they play in New Orleans, had a lot of that
feel....can't think of what it's called at the moment. Many recognizable
hymns, just in either French or Creole, and many I did not know.....I followed
along in their song book and tried to sing along...mostly humming because my
pronunciation was horrid (though really who could hear) but also my throat is a
little sore. The music was scattered throughout the nearly three hour
service, so there was a good amount of it. At one point the pastor asked
me to stand and welcomed Dr. Aaron Tabor from America to their service and said
that he hoped their church could be a blessing to me while I'm here as much as
I am to them -- I still feel like I'm gaining way more than I'm giving, but
apparently everyone is extremely moved by the fact that I am here and maybe
even if it was just that, they would say it was worth it. Thankfully, I'm
starting to get the hang of their medicine a bit and feel like I can contribute
a little more in their system, but I'll get to that in a minute. The
pastor's sermon was probably around an hour, and though I could not understand
a word of that either, it was amazingly moving. All in all the service
was a real treat to experience....even in another language it was amazing.
Everyone there was also so glad to see me and wanted to shake my hand.
Okay, just took a
break from writing and am back now cause there was another huge motorcycle accident
-- that makes two for the day. Motorcycle = more like dirt bike, and they
fly around on them with 2-3 people piled on sometimes. The roads are
rocky and people drive crazy as it is, so it's a sight to see. When they
wipe out....well, it's not pretty. I'm amazed how calmly some of these
people come into the ER room that we have, gashed up all over the place....in
America they'd probably be begging for morphine....maybe just cause we don't
have it they don't ask. Either way, it's impressive how badly injured
they are. Basically I spent from 12-7pm today cleaning, bandaging and
suturing up gaping holes in peoples faces, heads, arms and legs. This one
guy came in, which caused me to cease typing, and he had wiped out or been run
off the road or something, and his chin had this 3-4 inch cut down it that went
to the jaw bone, a tooth or two missing (couldn't really tell how bad the
inside of his mouth is, and I'm not a dentist anyway), a 2 inch gash across his
eyebrow that exposed all the muscles, and a gash on each shin/knee that
revealed quite a bit of musculature and bone as well. As the other doctor
worked on his face I worked on stitching up his legs, but with how much
everything was bleeding, it took 2 hours or so. The other guy, whose head
I stitched up earlier today, had some type of coagulation disorder, so his
blood was free flowing for several hours.....we tried to stop it and then
eventually just shaved his head and started stitching. That guy looked
like he had been in a fight or something cause 2 other guys came in at the same
time with huge gashes across their foreheads that easily could have been from a
nice fist fight.....but they were all in a motor cycle accident too. We
don't really check for any type of internal damage, cause we really just can't.
The doctor said that they look to see if they patients are vomiting a
lot, and if they are they use that as a sign that they have cerebral edema and
then they might consider sending them to the other hospital. Considering these
three guys were thrown from a high speed dirt bike and landed face first
resulting in nice open slices across their face.....there's a pretty good
chance they have some brain damage too.....but alas, nothing we can do here.
We also had a lady
come in who was in some sort of crazed mental confusion and she looked pretty
bad....I looked at her neck and she had some signs of pretty advanced diabetes,
and low and behold her blood sugar was at 41, so we started a Dextrose infusion
and she's still in the hospital cause she's got some other problems we haven't
figured out. Took the nurse about 30 minutes to get the IV started
because she had like zero veins visible in her arm....she was basically just
poking and prodding until she found it. Mean while I was supposed to
start an IV on this 2 year old with Typhoid.....she too had no veins visible
and I searched and searched, then the doctor came and she couldn't find
anything. I really felt bad about the idea of just sticking her and
seeing what I could find.....but the nurse just came and started doing that and
got it eventually. In an older person I guess I'd be less nice, but in a
two year old I felt kind of bad just stabbing over and over. She's doing
well now though :)
So, for what was
supposed to turn out to be a slow day in the hospital, as I guess Sundays
normally are, it was pretty crazy busy. Like I said, for about 7 hours we
were bandaging up people from the different accidents......it was an insane
bloody mess, and I don't mean like the British but literally....they aren't
exactly clean in the same way we are in the hospital, people were just bleeding
everywhere, over the bed, table, floor was swimming in it.....I changed gloves
like every 30 seconds and had my white coat covering a good enough portion of
me, but that's got some blood on it that I'll have to ignore the next few days
I guess. They actually do have a way to sterilize things, which was
surprising, so we had all the tools sterilized before we started suturing, but
they break sterile field pretty quick and it ends up what it is I
guess.....better than nothing. I'm glad I had all those supplies donated
btw, the one guy didn't have money on him to pay for supplies, so they were
waiting for his friend to get it.....meanwhile he's just gushing blood and I
pulled out a bunch of stuff and started bandaging him up. He was super
thankful....literally his left foot had like 1/2 inch of skin ripped off it
entirely, a gash above his eye, back of his neck ripped open, his right foot
had multiple holes, and I forget how many other cuts he had.....so he's just
bleeding all over the place and they are waiting to get the money to pay for
the supplies to fix him up. So, thanks to everyone who helped me with
supplies, they've been a huge help. Even when he got his supplies from
the pharmacy, there was definitely not enough to stop the bleeding. The
gauze, alcohol pads, bandages, tape, ace bandages, etc. all that I brought has
been entirely useful. I'm just keeping it with me at this point and
seeing what I go through and then before I leave I'll leave the bag for them to
use whatever is left. GLOVES -- boy am I glad I brought those. They
all wear them, but they only have mediums and they don't fit me, and they're
latex, which just annoy me. So my nice Large Nitrile gloves are really
handy.....and I'm going through em, so good thing I brought like 1,000 pairs.
All in all a busy but
amazing day (for me, not the motorcycle wipeouts) because I got to actually be
useful. There is only the one doctor here right now and she has worked 22
hour days for the last 3 weeks, so she's tired all the time. And then the
last few days she has been teaching me, which she seems to really enjoy and has
been amazing as I've previously said. But today, with all the accidents
and all the people coming in, it would have been impossibly hard for her to
manage it all on her own. The nurses here do quite a bit, but the
hospital has a decent number of patients so they couldn't all just come into
the ER to take care of it all. So it was nice that I was there, there was
a need, and I could fill it. And it's something I'm pretty good
at.....hence why I want to go into ER. It doesn't overwhelm me and I
enjoy the blood (which sounds weird yes...) and guts type of stuff, so all the
open wounds were fascinating. I had them show me once how they suture
things up with their supplies and then I went for it. I've closed up a
cesarean section once, but never really stitched up an open wound before....so
"see one, do one, teach one" as they say. I'm now pretty
confident at it and she was impressed at how well I did with it all.
Turns out she really hates blood so she's glad I was there to speed up
the process too....less for her to do.
Prayer:
- Continue to pray
for my health....cough is just lingering at this point, can't tell if it's
getting better or worse. Thinking some allergies might be contributing
cause my nose is running like crazy now, so I'm gonna pop some Benadryl and see
what happens.
- Next three days I
continue to work in the hospital, so pray that I continue to find ways to be
useful and continue to learn how to do medicine in Haiti. I'll update you
each day on how it goes. Thursday is when I'm supposed to go to the children's
home down the street and do wellness checks for the kids -- don't know how much
I can really do with limited supplies, but maybe giving a few bandages,
cleaning out an ear or two, and just spending some time with them will mean
something. If I see anything serious I can always send them to the
hospital (it's like a block or two away)
- My hosts are
continuing to be amazing. Today because I was backed up with taking care
of the patients from the accident, they waited like 2 hours to eat
lunch.....which I was like, you could've just eaten without me....but they
waited and wanted to eat with me. They're insanely hospitable. Pray
a special blessing on them cause they really deserve it. They've
dedicated their lives to serving through the Salvation Army, and go above and
beyond with taking in girls to help them go through school and teaching them to
cook and all that.....they like adopt everyone and always want people to stay
with them. They're really just amazing and as blessed as they are to have
me here, I could never repay how amazing they've made it for me to stay here.
I'll let you know how
tomorrow goes! It's getting close to 8pm here, so I'm just gonna go read
for a couple hours and wait to see if any other patients come into the ER.
Thankful for the
prayers and support. I did just look and see that the Bears lost.....I
can't exactly go screaming and yelling cause no one would understand here
really haha.....I guess at least I wasn't there to witness it. Go
Blackhawks!
Good night!
-Aaron Tabor
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