Thursday February 26, 2009

I started off the day reading Lamentations yesterday since I hadn’t visited it in a while and I love it. I love the emotion and the raw feeling. And it turned out to be fitting. I think I need to process what actually happened last night because I keep forgetting it happened; I guess it’s my way of coping with it or something. Last night a baby - 2 years old came - whole body burns from a house fire. They came and got me at the hospital since I hadn’t left yet. I was on the road to the clinic and I knew it was bad because everyone who had gone to look at the clinic was walking back shaking their heads saying, “oh Bondieu…” Frer Jal ran to get the key from Anne-Marie - she couldn’t leave the house since Rob wasn’t there so it was just me trying to figure out what the heck I was supposed to do. And so I just started cleaning his body as best I could. Everyone silent just watching what I was doing as we all stood in the dark with my headlight and a few flashlights. The skin was just peeling off. His face, part of his head, arms, legs, and parts of his back and chest were all burned; not so deep, but the surface area burnt was bad enough. He was responsive at times, which was surprising. I had given him ibuprofen and Tylenol already and then I just cleaned, put cream on, and wrapped him to try and keep him warm. I had no idea what to do with burns like that and was just praying the whole time that God would show me what to do. He was stiff and limbs were already cold, but I was shocked he was responding some when I finished. We had him drink a little, but 10 minutes later he was gone. Right in front of us on the table, he just stopped breathing. And even worse, his parents weren’t even the ones to bring him; it was a neighbor. I was mad. Mad that all the attempts were useless. And scared that I did something wrong; did I leave him uncovered for too long or had he aspirated what we gave him? But I know in my head he was already gone when he got here. The smoke inhalation alone can take kids. Ugg…just not a good end to an already bad day.

Silvina, one of the ladies in the hospital with heart failure, had a stroke today. She had been fine this morning when I saw her. But late in the afternoon they found her on the floor, not responding. Her right side wasn’t functioning well and she wasn’t able to talk. When we saw her in the evening we thought we would lose her; she had a major seizure when we were trying to get a hold of her family since they hadn’t been there in a few days. Uh tet chaje. And the day before we had to send our HIV patient home because she was at the end. It was chaos trying to figure out how to get her home since they obviously couldn’t walk, didn’t have a horse or donkey, which would have been useless with her condition, and no tap-taps could be found (which would cost us $400 Haitian, since the family has no money). The family was going to come carrying a bed, but I learned later they ended up finding a tap-tap at 11pm and made it up into the mountains to their home before she died.