Wednesday May 20, 2009

It’s dark this morning with the cloud covering. It’s fitting considering the state of my heart. It’s getting difficult. Nine more days. It’s especially hard in some moments. Moments of a good conversation with Frer Jal or my dear friends in the hospital, Rosnie and her husband Luka, who have been with me since January. There is something different about them. They understand. They see the state of their country and are not proud of everything going on here. But they are also not paralyzed by it. There is hope in their voices, pride in their children, and hearts that reflect that perhaps they really know Christ. They give me hope. Lately, they have been reminding me that I can count down the days until I leave. I say I don’t want to talk about it.

Last night was another classic Haiti moment. Sara and I decided our feet needed some soaking and heavy-duty cleaning as the cracks around our heels and toes were so caked with mud to the point a simple shower did not suffice. At least this was my case; I can’t speak for Sara or she may hit me when she reads this. So out came the basins, soap, and lufa scrubber. As we scrubbed away (my foot file is now useless as I think the skin of my heels dulled the dang thing), we reflected on the past couple weeks. They have been heavy. We had the delivery of the twins where one required CPR for about an hour (they are both ok now!), the next day the woman with preeclampsia finally delivered another set of twins - one was breech, then we had another set of twins come in with obvious developmental delay - they are three years old and weigh 11 and 13 pounds. I was stunned in silence when we saw they were really three years old. We are still trying to figure out if it’s a congenital condition or just plain malnutrition. After that, we had the 22 day old baby with the temperature of 108 (now, a week later she is beginning to cry, breastfeed, and is fever-free; can we say miracle?). We had a women with such severe anemia, all she could do was lay on the bed and arouse at times with her intense abdominal pain. All she needed was a blood transfusion, but we had to deal with the fact that the family probably wouldn’t embark on the difficult journey to the hospital in town and she would probably die (we still haven’t heard from her). This week started off with a four year old boy in obvious respiratory distress. Perhaps an epiglottitis, or some intense swelling in his throat, was causing us some fear that he would die right in front of us. We were even beginning to talk of intubation or creating a temporary trach, despite our lack of electricity and adequate supplies. They ended up going to LaPointe with him. Yesterday we saw three kids who were so skinny, their ribs protruding through their skin. With the stress of the past weeks it was a little hard to take. Their family just doesn’t have enough money to buy food. Sometimes I feel defeated, they seem to come everyday.

Most of the cases were just a reminder to me of the injustice in medical care in different parts of the world. All these cases in the states would be handled with confidence….or they wouldn’t exist at all.