Haiti - Three months after the quake.

The Day the Earth Shook
January 12, 2010 at 4:53 pm a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit 15 miles outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Approximately 222,570 people were killed, 300,000 were injured, and 1.3 millions were displaced. Three months after the earthquake little has improved. No longer are dead bodies strewn in the streets, but little else has changed. Immediately after the quake the U.S. news channels had continuous coverage of the events happening in Haiti. Now, three months after the quake it is hard to find any information on television or in the newspapers related to current events in Haiti.

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for those less fortunate. Haiti and her people weighed heavy on my heart since the quake. Haiti has always been described in the travel literature as "the poorest country in the western hemisphere". A previous patient of mine and her family are living in Les Cayes, Haiti as long term missionaries. After the quake she sent me brief e-mails to update me on the living conditions there. She knew I had been on mission trips before and she invited me to come to Haiti now. I approached several people in my church who have either been on mission trips before, or expressed a desire to do so.

Getting the Ball Rolling
Once I realized there was interest, I started the ball rolling to form a team to go to Haiti. Because public air traffic was halted, we had to find alternate routes to go. I contacted several organizations that were in the news looking for volunteers. I kept getting the same response: "We appreciate your interest, but currently the response is overwhelming. We will put you on our list and contact you when we have an opening." I put a post on my Facebook page that I was trying to get a team to go to Haiti for a medical mission trip. An old high school classmate of my husband's contacted me and said she is now working in Memphis with a physician who goes to Haiti regularly and works in a clinic there. She said there was a possibility we could go to his clinic. In the meantime, I had all of the departments in my hospital collecting surplus medical supplies for me. The hospital donated a van and driver to transport our supplies to Memphis where they were shipped via Fed Ex on to the clinic in Haiti. My church began to actively collect supplies I requested and special offerings designated for Haiti were given. The local newspaper ran an article about the items I was collecting and the response from the community was phenomenal.

One day at work a fax appeared on my desk. No one seemed to know exactly how it got there. It was from Dr. Jenny Chapman in Huntsville, AL who was working towards getting supplies and people to Haiti for a medical mission. It was an announcement about an organization called ProVision in Knoxville, TN. ProVision had teamed up with Regions Bank to fly seven medical personnel to Haiti with Regions Bank picking up the tab for the airfare, which by the way costs them $20,000 round trip. Each Friday they would fly seven to Port-au-Prince and bring the seven back they had taken the previous week. I called Dr. Chapman to find out more about this offer. She in turn put me in touch with Terrye Guthe, the personnel manager for ProVision in Knoxville. Terrye informed me there was an opening for April 16 - 23. This was about four weeks in the future.

I immediately began to contact members of my church who had expressed an interest in going to Haiti. Unfortunately, because of the short notice, many who wanted to go couldn't make the needed arrangements this quickly. Because of the generous offer from Regions Bank, and knowing how much I had paid in the past for airfare to mission locations, I felt I needed to go on this date. After a lot of networking, our team was finalized. Our team consisted of Mark, a pharmacist; Eric, an internist; Earla (my first cousin) and Sonia, both registered nurses; Al, an OR tech; Sherri, a nurse practitioner; and myself, a certified nurse-midwife.

The next four weeks were spent preparing for the trip. Donated supplies were collected, suitcases packed, needed items ordered from medical supply companies and pharmaceutical companies. I have been overwhelmed at the outpouring of love and generosity from members of my church and the community. Excitement and tension mounted as our departure date neared. I had tried to find up-to-date information about the current state of affairs in Haiti, however, information seemed to be scarce.

Travel Day Arrives
We arrived at the Regions Bank Aviation Center at the Birmingham airport on Friday, April 16, 2010 at approximately 7:30 a.m. Our departure time was to be 9:00 a.m. We had a very narrow window of time in which we could land in Haiti. The Regions Bank personnel at the Aviation Center treated us like royalty. The corporate jet we traveled on was plush. They even thought ahead and brought box lunches for us to eat on the way as they knew food could be scarce once we landed.

We circled the airport once before being given the visual clearance to land. Since the earthquake the radar control tower has not been functioning, so all planes landing and taking off are being directed by vision, not radar. This, we were told, can be a very dangerous situation. As we exited the plane onto the tarmac, the returning group of seven met us and were ready to board. After a few brief comments such as "Don't let the first day overwhelm you", "It gets easier as the week goes on", etc. we were ready to collect our luggage and see exactly what we had gotten ourselves into.

After about a 20 minute drive from the airport to our temporary housing, we were taken to the Good Samaritan Clinic in Pernier where we would be working to check on supplies, etc. To our surprise there were people that had been there all day waiting to be seen. They asked if we minded seeing them so we jumped right in triaging patients and treating their medical needs. Because the people of Haiti speak French Creole we each had a translator assigned to us that spoke English/Creole. Most of the translators were college students who could no longer attend college because the colleges had been destroyed in the quake. My translator, Farmega Innocent, was a beautiful girl who was a junior in college with an accounting major. She told me that only because she was in a wooden part of the university when the quake hit did she survive.

Our first patient was a young lady who had a large abdominal scar from her naval up towards her chest. She told us it was from "an appendix of the chest". She went on to complain of a headache. If I said, "Do you have...?" she quickly replied "Yes!". It didn't take long to see how the power of suggestion could work here. I learned to let them tell me their symptoms instead of suggesting symptoms I thought they might have.

The most ill patient we saw the first afternoon was a small child with a fever of 100.5 degrees. She had otitis (ear infection) which we were easily able to diagnosis and treat. We have been told that almost every person here probably has worms due to being barefoot and eating dirt and drinking contaminated water. It became a matter of routine to prescribe worm medication to every patient we saw that even vaguely complained of stomach pain, poor appetite, fatigue, etc.

We stopped at a little market on the way home to purchase some drinks. The currency exchange rate was 5 Haitian dollars to 1 U.S. dollar. We paid $25 per day to cover the cost of our breakfast, dinner, and housing. We had 2 Haitian women who lived in the house with us and did our cooking. We also had a Haitian maintenance man who lived at the house with us. Meals could be interesting. Rice and beans were always a staple with an occasional mac and cheese for breakfast, oatmeal with anise, a cole slaw that literally set your mouth on fire, etc. We packed lunches of granola bars, beef jerky, canned tuna, etc. We took enough for us and to share with our translator.

We ended our first day in Haiti by sitting on the balcony of our "home" and discussing different situations we had encountered at the clinic that day and how we might better serve tomorrow.