Saturday, August 6, 2011

Trip to LaPointe

Yesterday I went with Esther to take a handful of patients to the hospital in LaPointe for their HIV appointments, something they have tried to continue doing one time per month as the HIV program is free there. The problem is always just getting there…

The trip is grueling, long, and often frustrating on a good day, so let’s be honest, I was dreading the trip. But at the end of the day, all the patients were seen, got their tests and meds done…. and we made it home alive.

We left PC around 9:30 via a tap tap that didn’t have enough room for bodies even by Haitian standards, so I ended up sitting on a bag of some sort of produce (I’m thinking mangoes because I definitely crushed some and was left with some very wet pants) in the middle of the tap tap. We had had rain all the night before (apparently we caught some of Siklon Emily) and since there were eleven of us in total, we took what we could find. In summary, we made it to LaPointe around noon after slipping and sliding on a road that was mud about two feet deep the entire way, somehow avoided a throw down with the mango lady who was not so compassionate to the blan who was sitting on her bag/crouching in the middle of the tap tap, and somehow maneuvered eleven of us on motos and a second tap tap to arrive at the hospital. You think this trip is hard and then look at the patients who came with, sick and fragile. I can’t imagine how they are feeling at the end of this day.

The hospital at LaPointe smells CLEAN. Tents and clorox washing stations everywhere left from the cholera emergency they had in the past few weeks. Jenny from House of Hope told me approximately 1200 patients came through in less than a week; a real life nightmare is probably close to accurate. But the hospital was close to empty now, a relief I’m sure. It made it nice for us because the patients got in to see the doctor easily. So, four new HIV patients initiated in the program, two that are already in and maneuver the system well themselves, and three that were negative, one of whom, a man who came in about a month ago with a nasty abscess on his back that had maggots inside (yes you heard right). He got an official Tb test and it looks like it may be positive.

The trip home was not much better. We got back into Port de Paix late and so had to split up the group in different tap taps where we could find room. Esther and I ended up taking motos back. The last half of the trip was roaring through donkey trails up the mountain to PC in the dark, and again for the millionth time this day, I’m thinking, if only the blans back home could see this life here.