Whew! What a first 48 hours offically living on the island and starting work in the hospital!
To give a quick recap, these have been my medical adventures so far in Haiti... I've been my own patient with crazy hives/facial edema and we're still not totally sure what's causing it (i think it's the haitian cooking oil, which goes into everything they make!). My area director's wife had dengue fever in early November, shingles over Thanksgiving, and malaria last weekend. Their daughter Brooke has dengue fever right now. I fully believe that there is an element of spiritual warfare in these illnesses (also, for some of us, working too much, which I've been counselling other team members on the importance of resting and vacations-- a fun to thing to prescribe ;). I've also been reading a book on voodoo, and in it, a witchdoctor told the author (a Haitian lawyer and evangelist) that he has no power over the real Christians as they are protected from his influence. He does, however, hold sway over the nominal Christians. I'm so thankful for our powerful God who protects us!!! It's weird though to see influences of voodoo, like in an amulet around a child patient's neck and a coin on a string around a scrawny AIDS baby's belly and a big voodoo parade that passed by our missions compound yesterday. It is a religion that only brings death; please pray that we shine forth life!
I've missed my friends and colleagues from the ER I used to work in so much today as I began work! Some things in this hospital are so like home, such as sewing up a finger and treating a febrile baby. Other things are so different. Technically, today was my first day in the hospital to work. Unofficially, I sewed up one of our sailors' fingers on Tuesday night right after we arrived when he dropped an oil drum on it.
Then, yesterday morning, I was awoken at 8am to sew up the arm of a machete victim. Her common law husband had killed her lover several months ago, and 2 nights ago, his family sought revenge. They, heavily loaded with rum and machetes, hacked to death her husband, and attempted to kill her. She had a skull-deep biparietal laceration and huge gashes on her left forearm going through multiple tendons and deep palmer cuts with a near amputation of a distal digit. She also had her distal ulna popping 1cm out of her skin. I was called in to close the forearm surface level cuts and close over the ulnar fracture so that the doc treating her could do a scheduled surgery. Can you imagine what my local orthopedists would say if they knew I moved bone to do skin closure?! We flew her to the capital city to see an orthopedist (i've heard there's no hand surgeon to reattach her thenar emminence), but I learned today that she died. She was 23 and leaves behind 3 children. The weird thing is that I can kind of picture that happening in Oconee County, SC, only replace the rum with Budwiser and the machetes with sawed off shotguns.
Currently, they just finished a c-section on an eclamptic patient. Her bp was 160/120 and she's been seizing all day. They waited to do surgery, hoping she would deliver vaginally and then trying to wait out seizures. Thankfully, surgery was finally done, and she seized 4 times during the procedure. So far, the baby looks wonderful! Praise the Lord!! And mom's vitals are okay right now.
I saw my first scrawny little, scarecrow-esque AIDS babies with spindly limbs and bulging bellies today. It broke my heart. I also had my first TB patient. She's 11 years old and has right cervical lymphadenopathy rivaling the size of her neck. In the States, I would have guessed cat scratch fever; here, it's TB and we're doing an AIDS test too. We also admitted a 2 day old with sepsis. No worries that I've never done an LP before, since we don't have the lab capabilities to even run CSF analysis. Some things break my heart.
On a good note, the Lord is using me already to make a lasting change on the hospital!! No one realized that the hospital has no filtered running water, and hasn't for the 50 years it's been in operation! I mentioned it yesterday to my area director, and he contacted people Stateside who are bringing a UV filter in January when they come for a short term trip! Praise the Lord! It's neat to know that in a tiny way, I've already made a difference!
Whew! I'm tired, and today is not done yet! Thanks again for your prayers, your encouraging words, and listening to this long blogpost of stories!! I will be back in the States on the 22nd to spend Christmas with my wonderful boyfriend's family, then a little time in SC with my family, and then going with my parents and David to VA for my best friend's wedding. I'm so thankful that God already charted out some rest time for me, as hospital work is heavy on my heart.
This year is gonna be like nothing I've ever done before!
