Balancing Act

A few hours ago, us girls were sitting on the floor (because we don’t have enough chairs to all sit at the table) and I asked what time it was to see if it would be absolutely ridiculous if I just went to bed. When we found out it was 9pm, we were all kind of excited about sleeping. Then the power came back on and we were suddenly rejuvenated.

Adam likes to say he’s an “extreme humanitarian.” I think the ‘extreme’ part comes from the fact that we live a life of extremes. Extreme action or extreme boredom. This past week was the first that I feel like I had such a good balance of the two. Sunday morning we had the opportunity to go to church. This was the first time that happened because we don’t have any transportation on the weekends. We’ve gotten to know some of the staff at MTI (a faith-based organization) on a more personal level and when we asked about churches in the area, they offered to come pick us up. So Leah, Ashley, and I walked to the end of our road to catch our ride. Thank goodness I threw a skirt into my suitcase at the last minute. Sometime before the amazing music started, Alex (our ride) asked if anyone was going to be watching the football games that afternoon. Luckily for me, I was sitting down when that happened. Luckily for everyone else, church was about to start. I had literally been praying for days that I would end up at Hotel Ibolele to watch the championship games. I pretty much didn’t think that would possibly happen, and I’m pretty sure the people that kept hearing me pray about it didn’t think it could happen either. But after Alex asked and Leah and Ashley had to respond because I couldn’t speak, we arranged for him to pick us up later in the afternoon to go watch the games. At Ibolele.

We had a wonderful time (or I did, at least) watching the Packers thoroughly trounce the Bears. (Let’s take a moment to relish the victory…I know all you Eagles fans will begrudgingly join me.) Then Alex suggested we go to another place to watch the second game. I forget what it was called, but he told us as we pulled into the parking lot that it’s the place where most foreigners get kidnapped. Awesome, thanks for sharing. Apparently we were safe because we didn’t bring a security brigade to announce our arrival. At that point I didn’t care as long as they had food.

Sometime during the second half of the game when we’d finally eaten and I was again able to be happy and speak to people, Alex got a phone call. Apparently one of the volunteers at GRU had been in an accident with a moto and broken his femur. (Forget cholera, we now have an outbreak of femur fractures.) Then Leah got on the phone with Corinne, the medical director at GRU (who is ironically not medical) to get the details and see how we could help. After a few discussions with her and a call to Adam (still in the States), we arranged to pick the volunteer up the next morning and take him to the airport to be flown to Miami, with the possibility of me going along on the flight. Leah and I returned to the rest of the group and she was catching them up on details. “Blah blah blah … IS THAT BABY DOC?!” Sure enough, there he sat a few yards away. So for anyone who read that he’s been arrested or that he’s hiding in the mountains, disregard that. He’s eating shrimp with former US Congressmen.

Monday morning we set out early to make sure we would be on time for his 1pm flight out. It’s good we did, because we sat in traffic on the road up to Petionville for nearly 2 hours. That road is kind of like 95. Every 5-10 minutes you get stuck in a traffic jam for no apparent reason. While we were sitting there, we discussed how it would probably be ridiculous and pretty painful to bring him back down that way to the airport. Mark, who used to work at JPHRO, mentioned that they have a landing zone. So Leah called someone else we know who used to work there to see if that was a possibility and then called the Germans. The Germans were actually there already for some other reason and they agreed to wait for us.

When we finally got to the hospital, it was kind of like playing a video game to get into his room. We talked to the receptionist, who called someone and then let us go up a flight of stairs. Then we talked to the receptionist at the top of those stairs, who called someone else. Then the doctor appeared and we talked to him, and then we were shown where his room was. Aaron, a GRU staff was with him at the time of the accident, and he walked out of the room to meet us. He looked exhausted, the first time I’d ever seen him that way. Then Mark and I went in to assess the volunteer. The whole situation was even weirder because we’d just seen this guy a few days before when we gave him a ride from the airport back to GRU. I was checking him out and when I got to comparing his legs I found that the calf and foot on his broken leg were much cooler than the other leg. That’s when he told me that he was feeling “pins and needles” in his foot. I conferenced with Leah and Mark in the hallway. Compartment syndrome…pain, pallor, pulselessness, paresthesia… I had no idea what to do, because they teach that the treatment for that is a fasciotomy, so I’d have to cut this guy’s leg open. I offhandedly mentioned that I wished I could just call Brenden and be like, “Please help me!” Next thing I know, Leah is handing me the phone. “It’s Doc.” He made some more practical suggestions. “I know, I know,” I told him, “I know just enough to kill somebody.” When Brenden was here he’d frequently shake his head and comment on how new nurses know just enough to kill someone. That may have had something to do with the fact that I automatically assume something is a tumor or an aneurysm…

Anyways, we thought we’d try loosening the straps on his external fixation device. So Mark held traction on his leg while I opened the straps, and thankfully that seemed to help.

While Mark and some other strong people were loading him into the truck, I asked Aaron about what exactly happened. Apparently, the two of them were standing on the side of the street talking to the driver of a Mack truck. A moto drove between the truck and them, and must’ve accidentally jerked his wrist or something. Aaron said he couldn’t remember. But the moto hit the volunteer at a high speed and threw him into a pole, breaking his femur in three places. We got him to JP with no trouble. The only issue was that the Germans had their logistician with them, who was taking up a seat in the helicopter. I realize that it was literally a three minute flight from JP to the airport, but it was going to take our truck 30 minutes at absolute best to get there, and if there wasn’t a nurse to go along to the States, he’d be up a creek. But Leah somehow weaseled me in, and then managed to get herself in, too.

The plane taking him to Miami arrived shortly after we did. I talked briefly with someone who told me there was no nurse with them. I didn’t really feel like flying to the States and having to try to figure out how to get back, but the patient needed someone medical with him. So I was talking with the pilot and came to discover that she really didn’t want to take me along. She told me that there were people waiting in Miami to take him right to the hospital. “Okay…so…what about if something happens between Haiti and Miami?” I asked. She responded to this by telling me that she had a physical therapist with her. Good, how very helpful. I had a miniature conference and minor freak out with Leah because I couldn’t decide what to do. In theory, he was stable, having minimal pain, and would be fine on the flight. But I can’t really bank on “in theory.” The pilot kept saying, “Well, it’s your call, but I’d rather not…” So I eventually decided I’d stay and give report to the PT. He was very gracious and listened to everything I said. At one point he said to me, “I’ve read about compartment syndrome…is that a concern?” I’m pretty sure I laughed at him. So I gave the patient another dose of pain medication, gave the x-rays, hospital chart, and my own ghetto charting on a scrap piece of paper to the PT, and sent them off. In retrospect, I still have no idea if I made the right decision. Should I have pushed more and not cared about offending the pilot? Who knows? We got word from the PT later that the patient did just fine on the flight and was awaiting surgery. Later that night, Leah and I were talking about why that particular transfer felt so much more exhausting than the rest. He was, essentially, one of us. None of us know this guy very well at all, but we’ve worked with him and his team, and we know what they do on a daily basis.

The next day we were up early for another transfer. We were going to Medishare to pick up the femur patient from the previous week and take him to meet German Air 2 so they could take him home. After a slight miscommunication at the hospital where an EMT thought she lost the patient, he walked out to us on crutches. He was obviously still in quite a bit of pain, and they really went to town putting the staples in his leg, but we were amazed that he was walking. It was pretty sweet to actually be able to help send a well patient home for once, especially one we’d taken to the hospital when he was broken.

We were pretty excited about Wednesday. We had appointments scheduled, and Leah and I were finally getting to meet with the directors at We Advance to iron out some details. We’ve been trying to pin them down for weeks and we’d finally been successful. So the plan was to walk down the street to change the bandage on our neighbor boy’s head at 8:30, get to a warehouse to pick up supplies at 9:00, have the supplies, Mark, and our new volunteer Irene out to We Advance by 10:15, meet with Aleda and Alison before their own meetings began, then head over to the airport to pick up Adam. At 7:15, Leah’s phone rang. It only woke me up, but it was G and I can’t talk to him. So I had to wake Leah up (not an easy task) and get her to call him back. I was trying to ignore it, but then I heard her say that she was going to talk to me and call him back. Apparently, G had run out of gas and had to push his truck home the night before, so he couldn’t come get us. I’m not sure why he didn’t think of calling us the previous night, but whatever. So we called him back and told him he needed to get here somehow, take our gas can, go buy gas, then get it in his truck and come back. A little while later, Ashley walked into our room and said, “Guys? G just pulled up on a moto…” There was nothing else to do but laugh.

So after successfully missing all our scheduled appointment times, we headed over to the warehouse. We were picking up cots and two exam tables. The Haitians put the exam table into the back of our truck on its wheels instead of upside down, which just made the ride all the more interesting. But now I can add to my resume that I can successfully balance an exam table in the back of a truck in traffic while drinking a bag of water.

Thursday and Friday were more filled with running errands. We went to another warehouse and did some supply drops. We also had the chance to just hang out and walk around the neighborhood, buy sodas, and buy street food, hang out with our street food lady. Friday we also got another volunteer, a Canadian paramedic. Adam didn’t want her to be sitting around the house bored all weekend (since we have no transportation), and Irene is only here for a week, so we wanted to get her involved in as much as possible. So Leah tried calling some other people we know to see if we could borrow their truck for Saturday so that some of the team could go out to Cite Soleil to work on setting up the We Advance clinic. She couldn’t get through.

Saturday morning we got a call from the head nurse at Medishare. She had a patient who needed blood and wasn’t able to find any, so she called us. Then Leah had me call the nurse back to get the report on the patient. Apparently, there was a woman in her 30s who was septic and had a hemoglobin of 4 (it should be 12). She was on oxygen and not doing well at all. The Red Cross was closed. The woman had the blood type AB+, which is the universal recipient, so she could get any type of blood. First of all, we had no access to blood. Second of all, even if we decided that DIRT was going to donate blood, we had no vehicle. I asked the nurse, “So, she’s AB+?” “Right.” “Okay, so then anyone at Medishare should be able to give her blood, yes?” She responded, “Well, today’s our turnover day, so the staff has to go to orientation.” I’ll leave the story at that, because I have no further productive words on the subject.

Soon after that, Leah got a call back from the people with the vehicle. They were willing to let us borrow it for the day, and after Leah gave their driver directions, he headed over. Mark, Irene, and Kyle (our newest Marine – we’ll soon have all of Bravo company down here) were about to leave when Leah got another phone call from Fabienne at the MTI clinic. She passed it over to me. A young woman came in and they suspected she was having a miscarriage and she had a fever and needed transport. So we jumped into the truck instead and headed over.

When we were getting close to the airport, Adam got a call from the Germans. So we pulled in there first and picked up a 16 year old with a tumor that was pushing his eye out. And I mean, literally pushing it out. It was covered with a cup, but one of the medics showed us a picture, and it was sticking out from his head a good 2.5 inches. I can’t even describe it. So we took him to Medishare, then headed to the MTI clinic. When we got there, they told us they had another woman who was 7 months pregnant and possibly had cholera. So we loaded them both up.

And thus ends another week in Haiti, complete with candlelight dinner because our inverter still doesn’t work…