It's been a long time coming but it's good to be back!

Well, it's been six months since we've been back here, but it's been our lucky break (haha) that the guys down here at Adventiste have allowed us to come back! Thanks for being one of the paltry few - er, I mean one of the distinguished, discerning readers - who've chosen to follow us. This time the team is a little different. Liz Slauson (those loyal readers who've been following from the beginning will remember her of course!), an RN in med-surg at HCMC; Fil Drambarean, her brother-in-law (and currently doing Teach for America in Macallan, TX); Pat Ebeling, an orthopaedic surgeon (and my buddy from residency) at Twin Cities Orthopaedics in Burnsville and also at the Veterans Affairs); Beth Ward, his scrub tech (and one of the few meat eaters the group); Priya Prasad, a project manager at DePuy trauma in Miami; Tom Wechter, a second-year medical student at Michigan State and the younger brother of one of our current residents at the University of Minnesota, John Wechter; and Kris Kline, a nurse anesthetist from Hennepin County Medical Center. Somehow, it's not quite the same without Tom Slater, who's been on all of our other trips. But he's with us in spirit, and it's good to see that Beth has taken over his mantle and has brought beef jerky and the other Pat is sporting a bandana, albeit a little less sweat-stained than Tom's.

The trip down gets off to a rather inauspicious start. Kris somehow reads on his ticket that we arrive in Miami at 11:25 and figures that's a good time to show up for the flight from Minneapolis to Miami. I forget that I've just had a temporary crown put in (sheesh, you hit 40 and everything starts falling apart!) and it comes loose when I chew into a piece of gum during our layover.

Fortunately once we hit the ground in Port-au-Prince, things fall back into place. Those of us from the Twin Cities meet up with Tom and Priya who arrived just ahead of us, and we hook up with Adventiste's driver Richard for the ride to Adventiste. The entire day, we've been wondering what Tom looks like. He's from Michigan and none of us have ever seen him. We figure he was a college wrestler so he must look like John - 6'1", big huge cauliflower ears, and wide as a truck. Imagine our surprise when he's built more like Pat and I. There's a cool breeze in the air (relatively speaking of course; "cool" means you can breathe it and only discern a touch of burning trash smell) and we spent the next few hours setting up our army cots, jury-rigging our mosquito netting, and catching up with good old friends! Long-term US volunterrs Emily Rivas and Randy, our Haitian interpreter Frantz Bastien (whose mom runs the orphanage we visit), and Jacques the cast tech all make us feel super welcome.

Loyal readers from Trip 1 might remember us hitting the ground running as soon as we arrived. The same thing happens tonight when some poor chap comes in with a closed tibia-fibula fracture after a rock hit his leg, i.e., he broke his leg. Fortunately, it's not too displaced (meaning it lines up pretty good) and his compartments are soft and it's closed (meaning no wounds and no bone poking through), so appropriate for non-surgical treatment.  The two Pats tag-team putting him into a long-leg cast. As I'm chatting to him trying to get the story in my broken Kreyol, he subtly informs me that he does speak English.

We discuss afterwards that had this been back home, most surgeons would have recommended surgery - an intramedullary nail to essentially shish-kebab the pieces together. Not, as you might suspect, because it's a better treatment that's not available here (on the contrary, we can and do do lots of nailings here), but because people back home are financially incentivized to do more surgery. Pat and I still would have done the same thing, because a cast is exactly all this guy needs. It's certainly what I would have wanted if it'd been me.