2/1/11 (1524)
Awesome redeemer, healer, creator, and our perfect Father. How glad I am to come before You today. What a bitter sweet day- saying goodbye to Wilshaw for another couple months, but excited to continue my time in Haiti. I thank You for safe travel and just another day to be alive. 84 degrees in Haiti- going to feel hot again now that I've been in weather below 65 degrees the whole time. Not really looking forward to the craziness at the PaP airport, but it will soon be over and i'll be back "home" again for a little. I was nervous about my Kreyol being really rusty, but I actually could still understand a fair amount on the airplane, so I know it will come back to me.
Wilshaw & I enjoyed our last evening together. I had one last S'more we had by the fireplace. Five am came around early, but after one last warm shower and baked oatmeal I was awake. Well, the flight is descending so I'm going to look at the beautiful islands and mountains!
4/1/11 (0650)
Blessed Savior, how wonderful are Thee. You allow me to sleep and then wake up again, even if I am tired. If I choose to stay up late then I have to sacrifice my sleep and not sacrifice spending time with You. I can't get away from that because I want to grow closer and closer to You. I thank You so much for a wonderful day yesterday working and seeing everyone again! As well as a couple new people. Marc, Brian, & I stayed up until midnight catching up and talking. I am glad for a group that we can talk about personal things and not be judged, but instead we can encourage each other in the word of God & speak truth in love. I pray for us all to stay close and grow with You everyday. I pray for our individual and group ministries here. May we pour out blessings unto others.
It was such a wonderful greeting from all of the Haitian staff. Hugs & kisses and genuine gladness to see us. I don't think all of them knew who was coming back. I pray for guidance in my position to be led by You and to truly blend myself with the local staff. I pray all these things in Jesus Christ name!
8/1/11 (2343)
I guess I haven't written in my journal for a couple days! I haven't worked in almost 4 weeks so it took some readjusting to get back in the swing of things & fit everything in as well as working. We had a orthopedic MD and anesthesiologist for 1 week and they have been wonderful to work with this week. They adjusted to how we do things now, showed us a new exercise machine, and lead a bible study. For some reason we had a lot of no-shows on surgeries this week, but we could provide a couple much needed surgeries and adjust to being back here. We had a spinal cord injury patient come in Monday. He fell out of a tree on December 26th and had some deficits since the fall. They wanted to surgically stabilize him and minimize long term deficits.
Good thing we weren't as busy this week because I spent a whole day getting 2 units of blood for his surgery. And we tried lots of different things to get him to have a BM. Nothing had been done at the other hospital, so he came in to our hospital very impacted. So now, we'll have to figure out a regime for him so he doesn't get that way again. So for the blood, the family had gone the last 2 days and there was none at the main Red Cross. So I called around for about 2.5 hours until I found a place remotely close. Then Richard drove us over (about an hour drive) and we waited 2.5 hours to get the blood, but praise God they had 2 units! I took Mac with me because we had to ride the tap-taps back (public transportation). We took 3 different tap-taps. Boy I would have never known what I was doing because we were all over the place! We payed a total of 75 gourdes for all 3 rides (about $2 US). It was an eye-opener and learning experience for me. The things people here have to go through to get the basic necessities, or what we can easily get in America. In Haiti, it's usually the family that gets the blood and brings it back in a cooler. The only reason I went was because we had to do the surgery by Saturday (because the OR nurse and anesthesiologist were leaving Sunday) & the family had tried the last 2 days but they had none at the other places. We didn't want to risk not getting it that Friday, so I went instead. It was a new experience for me having to do it.
But, all in all, the surgery was able to get done! They didn't need the blood, but it obviously was better to have it than not have it in emergency (because you can see how long it took me to get blood.). So now we have 2 more units of non-expired blood. We only had 5 out of about 50 units (bags) of blood that was not expired in the hospital fridge (none that was the patient's blood type). It took me about 30 minutes to go through all the blood to look for some not expired, so Lucia helped me to properly discard of the expired blood because it wasn't worth keeping all that expired blood in the fridge. Hopefully we can put a system in place for blood- and try to give it to other places if it's about to expire if we don't need it.
This afternoon (after my 3 hour nap), we hiked up the mountains (Sophie, David, Gerry, & I...Sophie is the ER MD here for a couple months; David is the anthesiologist here for this week; and Gerry is the ortho MD here for this week). It was so beautiful! We met a guy Amos who guided us back to the right road to get down. I got to speak to Wilshaw for awhile then.
I'm readjusting to the cold showers and mosquitoes! My fan went "walking away" while I was gone, so I need to buy one because it's certainty muggy tonight! Kim (a physical therapist) said something that I didn't think was really noticed that I was trying to do, but she said "You're really working alongside and together with the Haitian doctors and nurses, which this hospital hasn't really had in one year." so I pray that You would be my guide as nurse "coordinator" (as Marc put my job title) and to keep Your will for this hospital.
Another thing that Mac (one of the Haitian translators) noted when we were sitting in an actually very nice medical facility in Delmas 33 waiting floor the blood was that there was a leak coming from the ceiling over the door. So with everyone's dusty shoes, it made the floor muddy. So the cleaning guy would sweep it up every once in awhile. I saw some of the Haitians sitting there point out the leak to him. Mac said "You see that's a problem in Haiti. Instead of actually fixing the problem, they just clean up the mess." Interesting way to look at that, and I pray that will change. Well, it's midnight! Time for bed!
