Making it happen

Things have been hopping this week here at Haiti Adventist Hospital. The new team is working out just great. Pat Ebeling and I are the orthopods, Paige Saunders and Chris Kline are the anesthetists, Beth Bard is our fourth-year med student from the U of M (that's the Twin Cities, not Ann Arbor, for you Michganders), and Ruth Bowen is a medical device rep. Right now Beth and I are about to head out to the Red Cross in downtown Port-au-Prince. We're chock full of fluids and I just downed an Annie's mac n cheese so we don't how up hypotensive after being in the OR and clinic all day. Why are we going you ask? Well, there's this poor chap who's been hanging out for the past 8 months with a right femur (thigh bone) fracture and bone overlapping by a few inches. He had actually been put on the schedule for a rodding (with a SIGN nail), but we cancelled him last week because his hemoglobin was too low, and trying to put back together a femur that's 8 months out is a long, bloody process. So the way it works here is that the patient or the family have to donate blood to get blood from the Red Cross. Unfortunately this gent doesn't have any family around, so Beth, Ruth, and I are off downtown donate blood. Wish us luck!