May 18, 2010
Mobile Medical Clinics
The medical leg of this trip became an intense project for a few of us well before we left the United States. I will try to post some photos of what my house (aka a temporary warehouse) looked like but that may have to wait until I return home. Suffice it to say that we brought several hundred pounds worth of medical supplies into the country, some of which were very useful for our own purposes and many of which we were able to donate to people in Les Cayes (a place where we’ve run medical clinics in the past) and also to a Haitian surgeon (Victor) who works at a hospital here in Jacmel.
Once in country, the medical team, which consisted of one MD, four nurses, a physical therapist, an extra set of hands with some experience helping out at mobile clinics and myself, traveled with the rest of the Jacmel team over the mountain. We initially planned on heading up to Marbial- where our Jacmel contacts founded and support a church and school- on Monday but the river was too high. Perhaps I should back up. For those of you who don’t know, Marbial is outside of Jacmel and up in the mountains. It’s a really rural area and also where Marlaine grew up. Unfortunately, the church was severely damaged in the earthquake and this is where we typically run the clinics from. In addition, there is no money to pay the teachers at the school. To get to Marbial, you have to drive up a river bed for an hour or so then hike for about an hour and a half. It’s a pretty intense and exhausting journey actually, but fun (well I suppose that depends with whom you are talking). It’s the rainy season here in Haiti and therefore not the ideal time to be traveling up to this area so when we tried to leave on Monday, we had to turn around because the river was too high. Thankfully, although we had to shorten the duration of the clinic, we were still able to go up there the following day and set up camp for the night to continue seeing patients on Wednesday. We were joined by the Sri Lankan UN, which was a trip. Among that entourage was another physician so we had three providers (this is including myself… shhh… don’t tell my attendings back home.) Two of the nurses joining us (one of which was my sister) have experience running these clinics in Haiti so I think everything went as smoothly as possible given the circumstances. As the church was so damaged, we set up shop in another slightly less dangerously damaged building with walls half intact and tarps stretched out over top to make a roof. It worked. We actually set up our tents in the church anyway when it came time to go to bed that night. I have to check with my sister to get the final count but I know that we say over 300 patients in two half day clinics.
For those of you who are curious about the specifics, we try to provide everyone (minus pregnant women) with a de-worming medication (Albendazole) as well as vitamins, particularly the children. We had a large enough supply of prenatal vitamins for all the pregnant and nursing mothers. In addition to this, we treat various infections and do wound care. Well, the nurses do wound care and I have to give them mad props for this because we saw some nasty infections. I was amazed with the way Kristin, my sister, held one woman’s foot on her lap while she cleaned out an infected area unlike anything any of us had ever seen before. As always, this clinic was a rewarding experience, particularly because we got to pray with a lot of people. When we had to pack up and go though, it was heartbreaking as there were at least a hundred, if not more, waiting to be seen. Pastor Daniel, who had come with us up the mountain, wanted me to be the one to tell them that we couldn’t see anymore people that second day, which was really tough. Another difficult thing with these mobile clinics is that we really can’t do anything with many of the things that we see. For example, we diagnosed a couple of women with advanced breast cancer. One mother brought us a really sick baby, less than a year old, who most likely had malaria and was severely dehydrated, too weak to even try to eat. The mother said she was breast feeding two other children (not her own) and had three kids and a sick husband at home. Because of this, even though we begged her to let us take her and they baby to the hospital, she refused. All I could do was cry and pray for her as we held her then handed her back to her mother, most likely to die within the next 24 hours.
As I said, the Sri Lankan UN soldiers, many of whom I met during my previous trip to Haiti a coupe of months ago, came to the clinic as well. They didn’t spend the night but did return the second day early in the morning to “help.” I put that in parentheses because although the doctor did see patients, the rest of them (maybe 7-8?), despite the fact they had guns and would have been very useful for crowd control, spent more time taking photos than anything else. One of them sent me his photos so I’ll have to try to post them too when I get home and have better internet access. Seriously though, every time I turned around, they were taking photos while people were sneaking in “doors” they weren’t supposed to be coming through. I must say, however, that I was grateful for the help carrying our bags and big, heavy containers up the mountain and they were, at the very least, entertaining. They kept stopping to take pictures of themselves with the big backpacks heading up the mountain.
After we finished up the second day, a couple of us waited to ride back with the UN guys after the rest of our team climbed into Pastor’s truck. (This is after the hour and a half hike.) They started cooking food for us on these little metal things with fire and also pouring flavored sugar into our hands to eat. Yes. Bizarre but very entertaining. Once we climbed into their truck, the UN guys proceeded to try to talk to us in English but it quickly became apparent that that was going to be the extent of the conversation because they didn’t understand anything we said in response. This was evidenced by the fact that after everything we said, they said “no problem.”
In addition to the Marbial clinic, we also held two half day clinics (one on Monday since our Marbial trip was postponed & one on Thursday) to screen all the kids at the Faith and Love in Action orphanage. There are a total of 81. I think we probably saw the majority of them plus some other random people in the community who are loosely connected to the orphanage. I’m not sure; all I know is that people kept coming in after we had “finished” seeing the kids. The kids in the orphanage are relatively healthy but there are a lot of funky skin infections and rashes that were difficult to identify.
There is probably more to write but for now, I’m going to close so I can post this entry. Feel free to e-mail me with questions!
P.S. I’m not proofreading any of this so hopefully there aren’t too many typos. Sorry if there are; no time!
