Tom's reflections on the past 9 days

Monday, 8 November 2010

(These are Tom's final thoughts looking back on our return trip to Haiti - a snapshot in time as to how we feel right now ... the thoughts going through our minds as we return home from 9 days of travel, hurricane, sleepless nights, serving the Haitian people, and sharing time with our good Haitian friends. -Pat)

I caught myself this morning being bummed out we missed our flight by less than a couple of minutes...literally. I had to take a moment; I thought about how grateful I should be for having the luxury of riding in an airplane, to a country where I can be free...a place where I have air conditioning (and heat)...a home that has carpeting, drinkable water, and a refridgerator to keep food cold. In a land of flat screen tvs, name brand clothing, and food that makes us obese, life's necessities are lost in the glitz, the glamor, and the $5 footlong. We left behind an amazing culture, a land where people simply don't have the basic necessities to live...and some of those people die because of that. We have health insurance that may make us pay $10 or more for a visit to the doctor...so many of the people of Haiti don't have the $1 for an ER visit. It saddens me...it completely breaks my heart to be perfectly honest. I arrived home this morning, and had a great cup of coffee at good old MSP airport, and a turkey sandwich. Those two items would be a pretty hot commodity back in Haiti. I chugged down two cans of pop as Pat and I got caught up on the blog...I'm willing to bet those children at the orphanage have never even had pop in their lives. As we all stood amongst those 44 children the other day, I shed a tear that nobody saw (becaue I was sweating profusely). How these children make the absolute most out of nothing; in America we have everything, yet complain we have nothing. Five children played with one empty bottle of sprite in the middle of a sewage-ridden street...in America we'll fight tooth and nail to make sure our children have the latest and greatest video game. How ironic is that...
We amputated the leg of a gentleman who was so excited to have it removed, he was "bumpin' knucks and blowin' it up" post-op. A little girl smiled as the pin sites on her external fixator were cleaned. Pat and I witnessed a miracle in Andre, who back in July was paralyzed in a halo...and now walks around and does yoga. (Andre  has JRA, or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and was a partial quadriplegic due to cervical spine subluxation when we were last here back in July. In the previous 3 months he's made a complete recovery - Pat.) I'd also like to say he has no home. Andre has no parents, but has an uncle, so no orphanage will take him. It isn't a safe environment for him to be with his uncle, so he lives at the hospital. He loves to color, loves to read, and doesn't like to let go when you hug him. Andre's story is all too common in Haiti...it makes my soul cry. We don't share these stories with you because we're trying to make you feel bad. There's  nothing wrong with having some blessings. We share these stories, because it's important to let people know what really goes on in a country that's not our own. That having material goods and living in the comfort that we are accustomed to is a pipe dream that we should not take for granted and that most of the world would be dying to achieve. We saw people bathing in ditch water and kids playing soccer with an empty Sprite bottle. We saw homeless people taking a bath in the sink in orthopaedic clinic late at night. Earthquake aside, Haiti had a lot of problems begin with, but it's slowly making changes. You can only see these changes if you've been there...we want everyone to understand it's an ongoing effort, unknowing if the end is in sight...but you do what you can, and you leave it all out on the field.
We had a spectacular team this time around, and each and every person got worked to the bone, literally (our bones were aching). As we said before, it's not about how many cases we did, or about how much we could donate...it's about each minute of our time we gave to each patient, each Haitian hospital worker...each innocent child. I can't speak for everyone, but if an experience such as the one we just had doesn't make you pause, and thank the good Lord for the life each of us has, you might want to get your heart examined...because it might be missing. Every person has a breaking point, and we each hit ours on the same day...but we overcame, we conquered those 9 days we were there...we did what we hope was some really good stuff, at least for the few people we were able to touch. There is so much need, so many people we weren't able to touch, but at least we were able to touch a few. Each person in that hospital should get an award, because our supporting cast was unbelievable...bring-the-house-down awesome! In a situation like we were in, we always wanted to do more, give more money, donate more supplies, hand out more food, including our own, clothe one more child...but we're human...and you do what you can...and you leave it all out on the field. We did that every single day.
Looking back at this trip, I realized more it's the relationships you develop, it's the 5 minutes here, and the 15 minutes there you spend with the patients, with the children, with the workers who sleep on the countertops at the hospital. It's the smile you smile, the hand you shake, the hug you give, sometimes that's all the medicine someone needs. There is still much work to be done, and we left an awful lot of it for the incoming team, and they'll do the same for the one after that, and the one after that...
We'll go back again. We'll continue to fight for every inch, strive for every yard, and help as many Haitians as our bodies give us strength for. The six of us did just that...we did what we could...we left it all out on the field...and we'll go back for another season.