A lot of the Loma Linda young men and women leave today which is sad cause they were fun to hang out with, and we did have some good conversations (Hey Mike! -Good luck with pharmacy school!), but also happy because they were kind enough to leave behind a lot of yummy vegan camping food. Tom and Liz fight over the choiciest treats which is OK cause they'll need the energy ...Now I wouldn't say we were exactly dreading today, because we came here expecting to work hard, but let's just say that Monday i
s always busy in a clinic. And not just at HCMC or Haiti but a lot of places. If you or I get hurt over the weekend, why waste your weekend sitting in a waiting room for 3 hours when you can waste time during the workweek? So everyone who gets hurt any less grievously than getting mauled by a rabid chimp over the weekend tend to all come in on Mondays. We'd even mentally psyched ourselves up for it yesterday: "OK there are gunna be times Monday when we'll be overwhelmed by the workload and ready to bash our heads against the wall in frustration with adjusting to a very different way of doing things locally. So when (not if) that happens, jus
t remember, this is what we wanted. This is what we signed up for. We've been trying for 6 months to do exactly what we're doing ... which is to be totally busy helping out with taking care of people who got hurt by an earthquake."
Of course that did help a little bit ... kind of like how if Tom hasn't eaten in three days, one peanut might help his hunger a little bit. There were a lot of people who came in. The usual orthopod here at Adventist, Scott Nelson, who'd been here since the quake, had to leave a few weeks ago, so a l
ot of outlying hospitals around the country sent stuff down here to Aventist knowing that we had an orthopod this week, and a lot of local patients who needed help waited to come in this week. Fortunately Matt and Ronaldo, ED residents from the east coast, see lot of people. Tom and Liz jump right into things and get their hands bloody ... external fixators need to be removed, pins need to be pulled, casts put on ... and oh yeah, there's a bunch of tentaus shots that are going to expire this month that Liz is so happy to use up! Translators help us all out, even though my high school/college French is just starting to come back, and this does help with a lot of patients, even if they are mainly Creole speakers.
s always busy in a clinic. And not just at HCMC or Haiti but a lot of places. If you or I get hurt over the weekend, why waste your weekend sitting in a waiting room for 3 hours when you can waste time during the workweek? So everyone who gets hurt any less grievously than getting mauled by a rabid chimp over the weekend tend to all come in on Mondays. We'd even mentally psyched ourselves up for it yesterday: "OK there are gunna be times Monday when we'll be overwhelmed by the workload and ready to bash our heads against the wall in frustration with adjusting to a very different way of doing things locally. So when (not if) that happens, jus
t remember, this is what we wanted. This is what we signed up for. We've been trying for 6 months to do exactly what we're doing ... which is to be totally busy helping out with taking care of people who got hurt by an earthquake."Of course that did help a little bit ... kind of like how if Tom hasn't eaten in three days, one peanut might help his hunger a little bit. There were a lot of people who came in. The usual orthopod here at Adventist, Scott Nelson, who'd been here since the quake, had to leave a few weeks ago, so a l
ot of outlying hospitals around the country sent stuff down here to Aventist knowing that we had an orthopod this week, and a lot of local patients who needed help waited to come in this week. Fortunately Matt and Ronaldo, ED residents from the east coast, see lot of people. Tom and Liz jump right into things and get their hands bloody ... external fixators need to be removed, pins need to be pulled, casts put on ... and oh yeah, there's a bunch of tentaus shots that are going to expire this month that Liz is so happy to use up! Translators help us all out, even though my high school/college French is just starting to come back, and this does help with a lot of patients, even if they are mainly Creole speakers.What helps more is remembering that these are people, human beings, no better or worse t
han you or me, whose idea of a crappy day isn't having to work 16 hours, or having your heart broken. It's having your house fall on you, being pinned under a piece of rubble for 7 hours before someone pulls you out, having your hand or arm or foot or leg ampuated cause it was becoming infected enough that you might die from sepsis, and then realizing you were the only one in your building, or your family, who survived. This, or a variant of this, is a fairly commonly heard story here. So every time the 3 of us meet someone new today we remind ourselves to try and chill out and smile. Most of the time people smile back. And for people who lately haven't had a whole lot to smile about, you know it's genuine.
han you or me, whose idea of a crappy day isn't having to work 16 hours, or having your heart broken. It's having your house fall on you, being pinned under a piece of rubble for 7 hours before someone pulls you out, having your hand or arm or foot or leg ampuated cause it was becoming infected enough that you might die from sepsis, and then realizing you were the only one in your building, or your family, who survived. This, or a variant of this, is a fairly commonly heard story here. So every time the 3 of us meet someone new today we remind ourselves to try and chill out and smile. Most of the time people smile back. And for people who lately haven't had a whole lot to smile about, you know it's genuine.There are a lot of complex problems today - nonunions (bone didn't heal), malunions (bone healed but healed crooked), infected nonunions (bone both not healed and infected), and infected nonunions with huge bone defects (uh, sorry, you're SOL). So we spend a lot of time thinking about treatment plans and giving people their options. They have tough choices, and a lot of people go back home and just think about their choices for awhile. Not everyone opts for surgery. A lot do. Today off the top of my head we scheduled surg
ery for 2 people with distal radial malunions, 1 chronically dislocated ankle, 2 hip fractures, 1 humeral shaft nonunion, a repeat I&D for the lady with the infected AKA stump, the humerus fracture on the guy whose shoulder we reduced Saturday night, and a tendon transfer for a woman with a wrist drop. A lot of this stuff was still due to the January 12th quake, even after all this time just cause it hadn't healed up yet, or got infected which delayed definitive care. (Kinda answers the question, "Haiti? Wasn't the quake like 6 months ago? Are you guys gunna have anything to do?") We estimated over half the patients we saw today in clinic were injured January 12th.
ery for 2 people with distal radial malunions, 1 chronically dislocated ankle, 2 hip fractures, 1 humeral shaft nonunion, a repeat I&D for the lady with the infected AKA stump, the humerus fracture on the guy whose shoulder we reduced Saturday night, and a tendon transfer for a woman with a wrist drop. A lot of this stuff was still due to the January 12th quake, even after all this time just cause it hadn't healed up yet, or got infected which delayed definitive care. (Kinda answers the question, "Haiti? Wasn't the quake like 6 months ago? Are you guys gunna have anything to do?") We estimated over half the patients we saw today in clinic were injured January 12th.
When the last patient, who's been patiently waiting all afternoon, has been seen (she needed surgery), we sit down and take a breath!
After all that we're still getting along great. The 3 of us couldn't hav
e picked a better couple of travel parners, or a better group of people to work with here at Adventist. After a fancy schmancy meal of peanuts and melted Hershey bars (have I mentioned it's hot here?), Tom, Liz, and I join Kenny (our de facto social ringleader), Brooke (our actual ringleader), Kristi (new arrival, a peds resident from Loma Linda), Jess (fearless nurse from Hotlanta), and Franz (translator emeritus now residing in Tent City) f
or a few Prestige's at the outdoor patio bar down the street. Let's just say the first 2 beers we've each had in Haiti taste reeeaal good. And what better way to complement this with a DJ bobbing up and down punctuating songs with a few randomly placed "Yeah"s, looking like he's spinning tunes ... especially when the music stops and he's still bobbing and forgets to stop pretending. ;p
e picked a better couple of travel parners, or a better group of people to work with here at Adventist. After a fancy schmancy meal of peanuts and melted Hershey bars (have I mentioned it's hot here?), Tom, Liz, and I join Kenny (our de facto social ringleader), Brooke (our actual ringleader), Kristi (new arrival, a peds resident from Loma Linda), Jess (fearless nurse from Hotlanta), and Franz (translator emeritus now residing in Tent City) f
or a few Prestige's at the outdoor patio bar down the street. Let's just say the first 2 beers we've each had in Haiti taste reeeaal good. And what better way to complement this with a DJ bobbing up and down punctuating songs with a few randomly placed "Yeah"s, looking like he's spinning tunes ... especially when the music stops and he's still bobbing and forgets to stop pretending. ;p
Liz, be the cutest RN in Haiti!!!! I love your name tag 'Liz RN'. You are doing a great job-all three of you!
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