Wednesday March 18, 2009

The English is flying! Passe Catabois is a different world this week. It’s like the fair…plus free clinic. Put up the tents, sell the elephant ears (pate) and the masses come for free medical consultations. There is a team of dentists and dental students who set up a clinic for pulling teeth on the roof of the hospital., plus a huge team from Saint Louis with docs and nurses for the medical side. But seriously, Dr. Shane and Dr. Alec, the docs that came with the dental team, are crazy. They look at a patient for a couple minutes and spill out this string of words; “I think he has rediculopathy in his spinal cavity, most likely due to HIV. That’s priority for the cause of his paralysis.” It seems like just pulling words out of their butt, but it’s real and accurate. They…are…smart…and I’m spending a lot of time feeling jealous of how much they know. I’m working with them a lot so far, working as translator and uh…cultural consultant, haha. Never in a million years would I have thought.

But the shock factor gets even better. Monday night they took off a gangrenous finger. Like, full on amputation, without cautary . It was 10 headlights, all the dental students huddled around, a very protected “sterile field” and a lot of throwing out of anatomical terms I’ve never heard of. It was crazy…but very well done.

I’m running on adrenaline and sweat and wonder when it’s going to run out. The company is so nice. Last weekend I was missing the other world so badly and I think the Lord delivered. The next day, the team arrived: a dentist from Granite Falls, four of the team members grew up in the Seattle area, and another one of the docs works at UW medical. A little bit of Northwest culture for the soul. And to top that off, Julie, my friend here who travels back and forth to Port au Prince for agricultural projects brought me back a sack of apples (which are no where to be found in Haiti) that said Yakima, WA ….. and… please recycle. Oh home sweet home….