Oct 12: Some Raw Feelings

It feels like I'm getting more and more frustrated and so easily annoyed each day. I'm here for the Haitian people and to work but find myself wanting to be lazy or just waiting for the last surgery to be over for the day. Or find myself cringing when I see another baby or obviously malnourished child walk through the door. That's the thing I don't understand. Why don't I feel more compassion for them? I don't know why I feel the way I do. Maybe it's that there is no clear-cut tangible way to treat them - and what we do is so sticky, complicated, and mostly hard because we have to rely so much on the parents to do it (and we don't see a lot with our own eyes) and so many are not the brightest. Oh I'm sorry but it's true. I have to understand it's a system problem, but my frustration still comes out. And oh I'm trying to figure out the cause of it all - we have a lot of 2 year olds, they are picky anyway, lack of protein in everyone's diet, and it's always those who have stopped with breastfeeding recently (the mothers stop when they are pregnant again) - that transition is the problem.

And oh Peter, he really gets to me. I think we will lose him, but he's a fighter. I feel guilty because I feel I should try more or harder but don't know what else to do. He was suffering so last night - laying with his mom calling for her, moving as if he was in such discomfort he couldn't sit still. Oh please heal his body, give him an appetite. But I think I need some compassion for today - I am lacking.