March 6, 2012

Its Filip and I's (Liz) privelage to narrate the blog today.   We started the day with breakfast, met Celeste, a Haitian OR nurse who is from New York but she comes back here regularly for volunteering.  Fil beat everyone to the shower at 5am, followed by Priya, who is always awake by 5.  I should mention that comparing this trip to our first trip here in July of 2010 after the earthquake, a lot of things have changed.  First of all, the weather is PERFECT this time of year.  It's a breezy 85 degrees with the beautiful sunshine, no rain yet, beautifully comfortable nights, and minimal mosquitos (mostly because we have our very own personalized bug magnet catchers with us: Pat Yoon and Priya Prasad).  Driving through Port-au-prince was also very different than in 2010.  Post-disaster streets were cluttered with rubble piles, and endless rivers of trash filled water.  The memories were so vivid as we were driving through PAP this time.  The streets were very clean, the sidewalks were swept, the air was more clear, the jail was being rebuilt, the gates on the schools were built up...standing from the roof of the hospital I could see the city clearly.  I do not remember that being visible 2 years ago.
9:00am; Pat Ebeling in the small procedural room, tore-up (no pun intended...lol!) a Carpal Tunnel case
9:00am; Pat Yoon in OR#2 removed 8-plates on a knock-knee/bow-legged four year old cutie that him and Francel (Haitian Ortho Surgeon) had fixed on their trip 6 months ago.  Tom (med student) scrubbed in with Pat, and he actually gets all the credit for removing the screws and the 8-plate.

Side-note; Filip might not know how to speak Creole, but he has found a mutual language to communicate with some of the haitians...He and Jean Joel both speak spanish having many deep involved conversations.

I might add that Beth (Scrub Tech) has really been a rockstar in the OR, she and Pat E. work really well together, and my guess is that she can scrub for just about anything.
10:00am; Pat E takes care of a toe amputation from crush injury, and the patient woke up from it and requested Cortisone shots in both knees and his back, easily done.

Priya was all over signing us up for random assignments from Emily to make ourselves useful...Me, Tom, Fil, and Priya organized the last of the medication (almost out of Morphine, but we have a huge stock of Ketamine and Solu-medrol...wonder how that happens:) I have to say, Priya has quite the organization skills and she is very good at directing us:) In the meantime, the surgeons were taking off a hip-spica from a 3 year old and replacing it with a new one as her hip displasia was not healed according to the XRAY (that took us 3 hours to get b/c we had to call Franz from home...)

1:30pm; removal of beads in an infected hip
3:30pm; biopsy of a tumor

our day in the OR ended 6pm adn we are exhausted, relaxing on the roof of the hospital in the breeze

So, this is Haiti! ....now ...a game of Eucher and out for some nice cold ones....!!!!!!
Until Next Time,
Aurevoir