Hello again from Haiti!
Today makes 7 days that I've been here now and I'm looking forward to a little bit of cold weather to cool me down when I return. I hear we got lots of snow....so, I'm glad that it's all pouring in now and hopefully Saturday I will have easy travels.
Today, being the first day of the year and Haitian Independence Day = a very slow day in the hospital. This morning Dr. Josef called me down to see two patients, one who had fluid overloading her lungs and another guy who had a heart attack. The woman's lungs sounded awful and we started treatment with some diuretics and heart medications for her as we assumed she had some level of heart failure (not like we could do an echo to confirm, so we make the best guest and treat). The guy I guess came in grabbing the left side of his chest screaming in pain, sweating, and his extremities were cool to the touch. They were able to initiate treatment pretty much the same way we do in the US, and they did get an ECG that was back by the time I got down there....which confirmed an MI. The Salvation Army Hospital does have some pretty high tech stuff all things considered, like being able to do an ECG, run some basic blood labs (CBC and all....think I mentioned this in the past maybe), they can do a CD4 count check for the HIV patients.....no X-ray machine that I'm aware of, but that would be handy. Either way, we can only do what people can pay for, so that's always limiting. But, we got the ECG, confirmed an MI, and started treatment for him. Other than that, the hospital was pretty empty throughout the day.
We did eat pumpkin soup for breakfast.....and maybe I would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't eaten in the morning. It was ok, not my new favorite dish or anything. Partially because there was lots of stuff in it that I couldn't tell what it was......some sort of skin and lots of fat -- they pretty much eat everything, half the time I'm afraid they are going to break their teeth as they crunch through the ends of the chicken bones trying to get the last bit off it. Anyway, I ate it and tried my best to seem like I really enjoyed it....but again, I think it probably was partially cause it was like 9am lol. That's one thing I haven't gotten used to is that they eat some meals for breakfast I wouldn't expect. One day, Deniese asked if I liked spaghetti, to which I said of course.....I wasn't entirely prepared for spaghetti the next morning for breakfast haha. Once you start chowing down you kinda forget how early it is. They eat a lot of porridge for dinner too.....so, flipped a bit for me lol. We've had spaghetti a few times for breakfast now, and though I probably won't make it for my breakfast when I'm home, I am no longer surprised when I see it :)
In the afternoon, since we had a good amount of time, Minel asked if I'd like a tour of Fond-des-Negres beyond what I see off the main road. The place is lot bigger than I thought it was, but given that he told me the town has about 30,000 people I guess I should have expected lots of hidden homes. Once we started trekking through the trees it was pretty cool to see where everyone lives. Some of the homes more luxurious than others, and the really nice ones are typically owned by people who travel back and forth -- lots of people from France have homes here I guess, or people have family members who live in America and build nicer homes for the family still in Haiti. Deniese's family all lives within walking distance, as she grew up here. So Minel took me over there and I met Deniese's mother. His father is 102 years old, but lives a couple hours away. Minel also was telling me how he bought a bunch of land back in the day and now it's 9x the price as back then, but from what he was telling me it's still not very expensive in our terms (like thousands only in American dollars for some plots). Anyway, he bought a bunch of land back in the day and built a really really nice home with a private well and indoor plumbing. The whole house is solid cement with tile flooring, nice wood doors. There's a Filipino nurse who is living there now who is doing a 3 year mission term with the hospital (since Minel and his family live at the Hospital in the apartment where I'm staying). There was another large home that was in the process of being built, some French doctor who started to build it when he came down to help after the earthquake, but I guess he moved back to France and just the massive foundation is left. But nice to know that if we ever wanted to establish like a base in Haiti, it wouldn't be terribly expensive to build something down there -- could be a way to help support the area too, you know build like a complex and staff locals to take care of it, grow food and all. Who knows, just thinking aloud here.
So, not a lot of clinical awesomeness today.....I checked in the ER a little while back and there were no accidents, but that's a good thing I reminded myself. They have been asking if I plan to come back, which I told them that it is my long term goal to regularly do trips to Haiti and around the world, and I would love to come back and work and learn in their hospital again. I said there are others that want to come to, and they said I am always welcome, and they'd love to have friends. Minel said, "if you came here every two months, that would be okay with us." Nice to know I always have a place in Haiti if I need it now. I think that for future trips this would be a great place to come back and work, especially with the ER situations and helping with all of the accidents. For the day-time stuff I would need to think of a service that we could offer them that is beyond what they already have. It's been nice to help the docs and learn, but with a group of people that wouldn't work so well. I know there is an ENT doc who is coming to set up a clinic to do ear checks and such, as that's not a normal service for them, so if we could think of something along those lines, that might be a great way to help them in a better way. I need to think on it more, and if anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I think if I learned some Creole I could operate a little more within their structure, but at this moment in time I just don't know enough to converse with people and discuss their medical needs. Either way, I'd like to help them in a way that is not currently being offered......and the ER experiences are always great for us and very helpful for them as they get easily overwhelmed sometimes with the number of accidents.
Well, there you go, I've managed to turn this into a long e-mail again :)
Prayer:
- I'm feeling better today, less of a migraine, so thanks for the prayers on that.
- Heading to the children's home tomorrow to do some basic well checks on the kids. I don't know exactly what they're hoping I'll do for the kids, but check em, make sure everything is as good as it can be, maybe bandage some minor wounds, clean some ears, stuff like that. Walk em to the hospital need be, though I bet they'd be here already if it was anything serious. But, pray I'm some sort of a blessing to those kids and the staff that runs the home
- Pray that God gives me some ideas to how I can better serve the people of Haiti in the future. For now I'm content knowing that I am getting experience working in a foreign country, as that's most important. Minel was telling me how he's been to many different countries and that getting the experience of traveling and working in different places is crucial. He said even just basic things like getting used to the food and the customs, it's important to know how to quickly adapt. He thanked me for being so great about everything and eating things that he knows I probably didn't enjoy, which made me chuckle a bit. He said they've had some people come in that complain a lot about things and don't eat the food, so he said he appreciated it....which I'm like sheesh thanks for feeding me free food and giving me a free place to stay lol.
- So, continue to pray a special blessing on Minel and his family here, and the hospital staff -- they're all truly amazing people who have been very accepting of me and wonderful teachers
Thanks again for reading and as always, thanks for all your prayers and support. Tomorrow is last day of doing medicine here in Haiti, so hoping that I can be effective and make some sort of change in their lives. Until tomorrow....
-Aaron Tabor
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