Maranatha, Turtles, and Homemade Ice Cream

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Today we went to Maranatha Church, which is a few minute walk down the street from the compound. This is the church that Scott has been going to. Scott is a long-term missionary who's been working at the radio station for many years, and he's going back to Alabama for good on Tuesday. Since this was his last Sunday at the church, he spoke to the congregation and bade them farewell.

Afterwards, Amy, Laura, Evan, and I went to Christoph, took a quick dip in the pool, and ate lunch at the poolside. They have a few turtles at the hotel, so we paid them a visit. Nothing too exciting, and their water needed to be changed, but it was cool to see turtles in Haiti.

Amy joined us again for dinner. The kitchen ladies had prepared sloppy joe and ice cream for us (they don't work on Sundays, so they made them yesterday). Ice cream was a bit too sweet for me, but it was still ice cream, so it was good. Later we hung out at Amy's as usual, and the three of them (Amy, Laura, and Evan) watched another episode of Grey's Anatomy while I chatted with friends online. I love Grey's, but I'm not big on re-watching shows unless they're hilarious.

It was another relaxing weekend.

Sickle Cell Crisis, Cannonball, and English Bible Fellowship

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Gavin was in charge of taking us to church this morning. There were Laura, Evan, Vicki, Nadine, Amy, and Steve, who is here for a week to work on some projects with the radio station.

Gavin had been up very early this morning because he had been called in to the clinic because a 10-year old girl was having a sickle cell crisis. He had relieved her symptoms and she was resting at the clinic when we left for church. A few minutes after, Gavin got a call from the mother of the girl saying she was in pain again, so we turned around to go back to the clinic.

Gavin and Amy rushed into the clinic while the rest of us waited outside. I didn't want to bother them, but I got concerned about what was happening, so I carefully went in. I watched Gavin and Amy as they started an IV and tried to calm her down.

A few minutes later the girl's father came in. While Gavin was out of the room looking for something, the father asked me, "Doc, in your opinion, do you think there's a cure for this?" All of a sudden I felt a huge weight on my shoulders, as if I had to deliver a bad news. I almost choked, but said in broken Creole, "Well, Gavin is the doctor, so he would know better than me, but this is a genetic disorder so..." The father understood what I wanted to say, and he responded, "But we can control the pain, yes?" "Yes, we can," I replied, and he accepted my answer.

It seems that the father had already heard that there is no cure for his daughter's disease, but I felt awful to think that I might be the one to tell him there's no real hope. I had learned about sickle cell anemia many times probably since elementary school, but actually seeing how it affected the girl and her family had a profound impact on me. It made me realize how serious the disease is, and that the people suffering from them are not just numbers in statistics.

Gavin and Amy were able to calm her down after a few minutes, and we let the family stay in the clinic with her while we went to church. Since we were running late for church, Gavin decided to go to the church next to the OMS compound. We used a little portable audio system so Gavin could translate into a mic and we could listen to him through an earphone. He started to translate for a bit, but he left in the middle because he was called by the girl's parents again. I could only catch a few phrases because they talked so fast, so I couldn't translate. I need to practice listening more.

After the service, we went to Christoph Hotel as we usually have lunch there on Sundays. We took a dip in the pool afterwards. We did a few cannonball dives, and Laura and I threw Nadine and Gavin in the air like we did last time when we were at Christoph.

Later in the afternoon, we went to English Bible Fellowship, which is held at the Radio 4VEH station every Sunday at 4:00PM. There were a few short-term mission teams with different mission organizations. It was cool to see them and to be able to worship together in English.

On Sundays we are on our own for dinner, which just means that we don't have a cook to prepare us food or wash dishes, but they make pasta salad or something we can heat up in advance. We also don't have a long-term missionaries scheduled to join us, but Amy joined us for dinner tonight, just because she can.

Afterwards, we hung out in Vicki and Nadine's room as they packed their bags because they are leaving tomorrow. We watched the rest of Chaos Theory, which had a pretty good ending. It's going to be so sad to see the two leave tomorrow morning.

Mobile Clinic, Day 2

Sunday, June 29, 2008

We went to Ms. Prudence's church this morning. Her husband is the pastor there, and this is the church where we did our mobile clinic yesterday. During the service Gavin introduced us to the congregation, and each of us said something briefly. I said something in Creole, and I almost choked up, but I hope I said what I meant to say.

Just as we got out of church, there was a crowd of people gathered around something on the ground. It turned out to be a 14-year old girl who had been carried in on a stretcher from a village far away. She had a big laceration behind her left thigh. Some old man hit her with a machete on Tuesday, so she had an open wound for the last 5 days. Since it's been too long since the injury, we couldn't suture it. Instead we cleaned the wound, bandaged it, and brought her down with us. She'll be treated at our clinic everyday.

I'm in awe of how people here can just carry heavy loads on their head and trek over a mountain barefoot. Many of them were so willing to help out as well. On the way back, it started to rain a bit, and then it poured when we got on the truck. It reminded me of the time when I went to Zanmi Lasante, and rode through the pouring rain on a open-back tap-tap for over 2 hours. It felt good to be in the rain.

We got back around mid-afternoon, and I took a nice hot shower. Oh, I never mentioned, but we have hot shower here. It's amazing. After dinner we finished watching Enchanted at Laura's place. I think we all have the song "How does she know that you love her" stuck in our heads.

Mobile Clinic, Day 1

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Today we went up to a place called Souffrier to do a mobile clinic. Tim (lab professor) got sick this morning, and there was another extra spot on the truck, so Carly and Emily, two of the girls on Tim's medical team, came instead. Our team consisted of Gavin (doctor for N. Ireland), Amy (nurse from Canada), Julie (physio from N. Ireland), Evan (doctor from N. Ireland), Mary (lab technician from the US), Ms. Prudence and Ketsey (Haitian nurses), Joel (Haitian evangelist), Carly and Emily (girls on Tim's team from the US), and me.

On the way there we stopped by an ice factory to fill up our icebox. I had seen so many people selling ice on the street, so it was cool to see where they were getting the ice from. It took us about 1.5 hours to get to the foot of the mountain, then another hour and 45 minutes to hike over the mountain. There were many volunteers from the village we were going to, and they carried our boxes and bags for us. The guys who carried our boxes on their heads, most of them barefoot, took a shorter but steeper path, while our team took the longer and easier way. We walked along a stream, which we had to cross several times. Near the end we had to cross a river on foot, so we took off our shoes and socks. The girls made fun of us guys because the Haitian guide "helped" us cross the river by holing our hands, which we totally didn't need at all. In fact it would have been easier to cross if they just let us on our own. Anyhow, it was a fun hike.

Our hosts had prepared brunch for us when we arrived. It was about 9:30AM. We were told that we won't eat until we finish the clinic, so I ate a lot, but then we ended up eating lunch at 1:00PM. They had slaughtered a goat for us so we had it for lunch and dinner. It'll probably be our breakfast tomorrow as well. Usually when people slaughter a goat, they use every part of it. They make soup out of the gut and bones, which we had for dinner, and they even eat the head, which fortunately wasn't served to us.

We were able to set up the clinic surprisingly fast. We used the church building for the waiting room and consultation rooms, and the storage for the pharmacy. The lab was setup outside next to an amazing view. Gavin and Ms. Prudence consulted on their own while Evan and Amy worked together (they either say Amy was translating for Evan, or Evan was helping Amy confirm her thoughts). Julie, Carly, and Ketsey worked in the pharmacy. Mary, Emily and I worked in the lab. Joel walked around talking to people about Christ.

I greeted the patients that came to the lab, checked what tests needed to be done, and drew blood if needed. There were a few patients, especially kids, whose veins were so small that I couldn't draw blood from them. b helped me out by using the syringe technique. In all, I drew blood from about 20 patients and did finger sticks on a few. Emily did the screening tests. We had a lot of patients with H. pylori, a few with malaria, and a few others with Hep B. Mary did everything involving the microscope and all the rest. Since Tim wasn't there, she was quite busy.

Joel, our Haitian evangelist, did an amazing job, and lead 25 people to Christ today. That's 10% of all the patients we saw. Praise God!