Sunday, March 11, 2012

This is the first post in a few days because internet service at Adventist has been down for awhile. (Rumor has it that someone forgot to pay the bill - shh!!) As always, the week has flown by way too fast and sadly it's already time to return home. But again, as always, we're all happy to see friends and family again.

On Wednesday night there was a magnitude 4.5 earthquake. We only felt it as a slight vibration where we were, but it very understandably caused a lot of concern. Everything seems OK here. Then on Thursday there was some unrest downtown with public display of strong sentiments for and against President Martelly; apparently there was a claim that he was born in Italy and was not a Haitian citizen which seemed to finally settle down a bit after he spoke in front of the UN and showed his Haitian passport.


So we had a mildly nervous couple of days but everything's OK. Looking back on the week there have been some encouraging signs of progress here in Haiti... organized teams of workers sweeping the streets. Stoplights. Road crews pouring concrete. It gives you a lot of hope for the future of Haiti and we look forward to seeing even more progress the next time around!

On our last working day, Friday, we all tag team our way through clinic, and Pat and Beth excise a ganglion cyst from the wrists of two patients, who also happen to be hospital employees. One's dorsal (back of your wrist), and one's volar (front side of your wrist). They do them under local anesthesia, which often (even at home) is a touch uncomfortable, which we usually supplement with "OK, breathe deep." Unfortunately "breathe deep" anesthesia only works if one understands "breathe deep"! Despite that, they both do great afterwards and in fact the first lady works right afterwards, helping out with the surgery right after hers! Quoth Pat E.: "I don't think I'll ever again do a case where the patient then circulates the next case."


As on previous trips, we visit Franz Bastien's family's orphanage on Saturday and visit with the children. For me this is always the high point of the trip! If someone needs a second and third washout of an infected femur fracture the week we're there, as necessary as that is, it might not give them that much immediate joy. In fact it gives them a lot of immediate pain. But visiting the kids, playing Changez Movement with them, and handing out joys and treats is both fun for us and gives the kids a lot of immediate joy. Just one more reminder to them that despite living on a dusty concrete floor with siding for a roof and sleeping multiple kids to a bunk smelling of pee, they are not forgotten and someone outside their four walls, the outside world, cares about them. Pat E. and Beth have made up about 50 little packs of pens and notepads and brought a bunch of beanie babies. Tom has brought a bunch of soccer balls so the kids don't have to play soccer with an empty pop bottle. I've got the leftover flipflops and shoes we couldn't fit in our bags on our last trip - thanks to Tom Slater and Paige Saunders, who couldn't make it this time, but are there in spirit (everyone asks about them ... where's Tom? where's Paige?). And again as previously, it's hard to leave. There are little things I'll never forget. The flies buzzing around three dirty toilets - three toilets for 45 kids. The complete, rapt attention the kids give you when we get up in front of the class to address them - so well behaved! Handing out packs of nuts (thanks Leah Otterlei!!), and watching one 5-year-old boy, without being asked, share his with a little girl who didn't get one. So touching!

Haiti's never followed daylight savings time before, but this morning Nathan informs us as we're getting ready to leave that the president's decided that they'll start following DST all of a sudden. So our ride to the airport is leaving now, which isn't 6:30am, but 7:30am. We throw our gear together (which is a lot lighter after leaving some food and clothes behind) and load it up onto the hospital's truck for the ride to the airport. Liz's flight is at 9, whereas the other six of us have the noon flight, so she takes off earlier. (Priya left for Ft. Lauderdale last night so the group of eight is now seven). We pass by the large open air market on the coast road from Carrefour to Port-au-Prince. Mounds of trash the size of Rhode Island. A thick miasma of rotten fish that I swear one breath of is the equivalent of smoking about 7.5 cartons of cigarettes. A huge canal filled with styrofoam containers, so huge you could make a bounce house type play palace out of it - you know, the kind they have at McDonalds, except multiply that times 4 or 5. Folks chopping up chicken and goat with big ole meat cleavers making me so glad I don't eat meat even back home, let alone here. Lots of mixed feelings as we ride back. Feeling good about helping people ... feeling humbled by what others are doing, and how much more they've sacrificed than we have. Wanting to go home ... but wanting to come back and do more.

When we arrive, after dodging the skycaps (watch out - let them touch one bag and they own it, and it takes a buck to get it back) and artists hawking their canvas paintings, we see Liz in the checkin line, a mere five minutes ahead of us in the line despite having left for the airport an hour ahead of us! We feel kinda bad about it and joke that even if our line overtakes hers we'll let other people pass us so she can still beat us to the gate and feel like leaving an hour ahead was worth it. We say bye to Liz again. The other six of us will split up later, some in Miami, some back in Minneapolis.

Sitting in the American airlines departure gate area lounge is a world apart from the large unfinished warehouse we arrived in last week. There's coffee and we all promptly get some. I unabashedly turn in my membership in the Man club as I buy a girlie iced espresso blended fufu type concotion (they call it the Rebo Frappe) and drink the !@# out of it. The other guys are playing Euchre, and as much as I really miss having my butt handed to me in a sling to the sounds of derisive laughter at forgetting the rules, I decline (wait, I thought hearts were the trump suit ... so the jack of diamonds is a trump card too? and it's not a diamond anymore?).

Haiti has left us all with lasting impressions. Despite the mixed emotions, some things aren't mixed. The people are beautiful, both inside and out. The country despite the poverty and trash has a lot of natural beauty. As we all split up, Priya back to project management and an uncertain future in trauma at DePuy, Liz back to nursing at Hennepin County, Fil back to Macallan TX for Teach for America, Tom back to Michigan state to study medicine, Pat and Pat back to our orthopaedic surgery practices, Kris back to putting people under anesthesia at Hennepin County, and Beth back to assisting and setting up surgery at an ambulatory surgery center, we're all going back to our normal lives, but a little different as a result of having our horizons widened a bit. Taking back some lessons home. First but not necessarily foremost, learning to be flexible - you can really get by in the OR and outside the OR with simple things and a bit of resourcefulness (like the hip spica cast table we improvised out of a board and few boxes). Appreciating what you have. Appreciating that everyone has something to offer you. Appreciating that everyone's an expert in something and knows more than you about something. Realizing what really matters in life, and how happy you can be with how little material stuff. Realizing that the dream of a life we all live back home isn't reality, it's an unsustainable fantasy world that the rest of the people on this planet can only dream of. These lessons that are different for each of the eight of us I'm sure, about what's important in life and how we'd all like to grow as a result of this brief sojourn in this beautiful country.

1 comment:

  1. :) Beautiful Ending to a "To Be Continued" story! Thanks Pat for your blogging skills.!

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