Jay Blog #3 Sunday 1/24

Jay’s blog #3


Don’t remember what I wrote, or where I ended. I’ll leave Jan to fix that. The days are blurring. Today is Sunday.

Late Friday, Ann and Matt, husband and wife Internist and Pediatrician, Wayne, the Firefighter, and Paul Davis (Jan’s husband and Team leader) arrived via Nassau. Many delays,

They got to the house by 4PM and MEBSH was SUPPOSED to pick us up at 5PM to drive a hard hour (More like 100 minutes) to Bonnefin (Good ending), the finest mission hospital in Haiti.

BF has fallen on hard times. 30 years ago, all the senators and rich went there for care. It’s own hydroelectric up in the mountains at, I’m guessing 3500 feet, it was steep, beautiful and a huge campus. The last coat of paint was maybe 1950. Every door and counter worn to nubbins. Ten years of bad economy and other factors drove off the docs and now it’s Dr. Belding, a brilliant dedicated Surgeon from the U.S. who comes in frequently and Dr. Rudolph, the finest Haitian physician, I’ve ever met.

They were joined two days after the quake by a pediatric orthopedist, a paramedic, a nurse and the five of them admitted and discharged 190 of 250 critical patients in 8 days doing 60 amputations and losing FOUR patients. Dr.Belding was flying out and I was being brought in to mop up post op and complications care with my team of three docs plus the rest of the team.

We arrived at 10PM, did rounds, went back and talked, slept, and in the AM, I awoke to a house empty of the old team.

We got up early, went to the hospital and NO STAFF. It was Saturday, they were tired, they have not been paid in 11 months and we had NO ONE. By 9AM a couple nurses trickled in and ignored us.

At 9:30, after 3 hours of unpacking and organinzing our supplies, we we’re called by MEBSH and told, we have a team of 21, with two orthopedic surgeons plus anesthesia (good luck, we’re out of oxygen and anesthesias supplies) and they’d be here by 10:30.

We sat and waited and at noon, decided to eat lunch, and if they no showed. Get to work. Ann and Matt went up to make rounds with Wayne, Paul ran supplies and Jan and I went off to do Admin.

I Found Dr. Rudolph asleep at home and asked if he could open some doors and he informed me that he had not been paid in 11 months. I knew this in advance as DR Tenhaaf, from DeSante Lumiere Mission Hospital who loves this man dearly had said he pay $500 US for him to stay for two weeks. The money did not arrive.

I handed him $500 in $20’s and he went to work. I want to be careful. This man is not a mercenary. He’s wonderful. But he’s exhausted, he can’t feed his family , he has a job offer, and can go anywhere that DOES pay and he had arrived at a natural time to make the decision.

Matt and Ann changed dressings, adjusted traction, accessed wounds, blood clots, lungs, fluid volume, IV’s, antibioitics and we worked until 4PM when two things happened at once. A clot let go and a women started bleeding out and the new team arrived.

I went to debrief them, tell them that they might want to fundraise payroll for the hospital staff and send the orthopod up to help Matt and Ann.

They we’re 21, they were 12, and the driver informed he was NOT going back down the mountain, wasting another precious day. I was NOT happy. Called all over MEBSH and an hour later, we’re on the road back to Cayes.

I showered (there was no water at BF so we we’re a bit ripe). Dave Kroeger, my engineer had arrived with the well head to get water to 5,000 people in the drought in the desert. He’s here to install the first of our solar panels. He brought in 100 doses of Tetanus toxoid (all the dead tissue is ahuge risk) and Ketamine for anesthesias, Versed for anesthesia and valium.

I left for Dr. Tenhaaf immediately as it was on ice.

My own team had discussed with Dr. Rudolph and the administator that all over Haiti, the teams are running out of patients. At 10 days, all Americans would be long dead but we’re still pulling out Haitians. But the ones with Gangrene or crushed extreminities are dying by day 10 so they either saw or surgeon or they didn’t.

Lot’s of missions teams are arriving just a bit late. PAP was a trainwreck and it was just too slow.

I Asked Dr. Tenhaaf and he also said he could do more amputations if we can find them quckly.

We decided last night, we’re renting a big bus, 60 seats (That holds 100 Haitians) and drive to PAP, Monday AM at the break of light, with out team, two translators, two Haitian Police, and a Taptap to follow to carry a family member.

We’re putting out house cots without legs across the seats (we have 12), and hand IV’s from the windows, give food, replcement liquieds like home made Gatorade, water, Injectable antibiotics, all the pain relief we own and make a run back to Tenhaff to give him the ten worst, then up to Bonnefin with the rest.

Amoce is working with Joel Beaucejour and a friend of Jan D’s from Christianville to talk to hospital administrators and we hope we can take the last lagging care back here.

Today is church and David and I are going to the little church that Elmore Church started last year. We’ll have maybe 50 people.Not sure where Jan’s team is going.

Then Wayne, Dave and I are going to the Savanette to get supplies for the bus and work on water while Paul and Matt and Ann and Jan pack for the bus trip.

Every once in a while, you hear someone call it a “roadtrip”

The refugee center is full to overflow and While gone, We paid to put 150 more people in a bus to Jeromie where they have family.

Jan N. flew in 2500 lbs of rice and beans and oil the day we ran out of food and that BUV arrived to cheers from staff and visitors. We got 50 more tents,

today, we are supposed to get 1900 lbs of meds and supplies I ‘ordered’ from the US. That Jan N. somehow got over night and put in our plane.

I got a txt message last night that we have plane load of rice and beans coming daily for the next five days, Sounds like Jan is getting really good at this.

Benot continues to feed about 1500 people getting off buses at the police station.

Tomorrow will be interesting to say the least. We will be stuck again in BF, and all day we’ll be walking on top of the seats to get from one patient to another. Reaching down to hand out urinals (coffee cans), change IV’s, give out pain pills, nausea shots, food and reassureance in a lurching bus.

We are rested and ready as we can get.