Hope for Haiti

“We have no hope”.  That was what one of the people told me today. I tried to get an understanding of what exactly he meant. I also tried to ask him how they deal with their pain and their losses. He had no more words. I feel for these people. Many are unemployed, little education, and everything they have worked so hard for is now gone. We are “discharging” people with no home to go to, no family, no place to sleep, etc. This is harder for me to deal with than I thought it would be.

We had a 24 year old patient with bad thigh infection, knee dislocation, and foot drop today. She lost a fair bit of blood, after already being low and she needed a blood transfusion. We have no blood bank. We knew her blood type and three of us matched her type (me included) so we all decided to donate some blood for her. Adam said that I shouldn’t do it because I still had more surgeries to do. He promptly jumped up on the table, collected some blood and was back on his feet running around. The patient is stable and doing better. Jill, one of our OAM nurses also donated some blood to the patient. I was very proud of them for doing so. I was also happy because, as many of you know, I’m not a big fan of needles being stuck in me!
For all you multiligament knee injury fans out there, we do have one patient with a PCL, posterolateral corner injury, and another with a distal physeal fracture/dislocation of his femur. Patient census remains
around 35. Did 9 cases today, have four on so far for tomorrow. We are still scheduled to come home Saturday.

“We have no hope” he said. My “hope” is that through Double Harvest, PIH, our efforts as medical providers and the millions of people around the world who have helped in some way or another—this is the “hope” the Haitian people need. We can’t do everything, but each of us can at least do something.

On a more personal note, the crew we are with from GR is fantastic. Multiple parts seem to work as one, well oiled machine. I’m so happy to be here with all of them. As I have thought back to some of my earlier blogs, I realized that I have not yet mentioned the UNBELIEVABLE job Adam and Amanda Post have done. Having them here at this time is a huge asset. They have essentially organized all the equipment, oversee sterilization and processing, scrub tech, etc.  My failure to “give them huge props” is certainly well over due!

Jabara