I can confess now…now that I am safely returned, I spent a lot of time thinking about excuses not to go…. To much work to do, I had a cold (of course that would have been a lie, but I was desperate), not a good time of the year, etc, etc. At one point the only thing that held me back from not going, was that it would have been just to embarrassing explaining to everyone why I didn’t go! I was scared that my clinical skills wouldn’t be adequate or that I wouldn’t be able to handle working the 12-hour shifts. It never occurred to me to be afraid of the political situation, or cholera, or any of the other potentially legitimate concerns about going to Haiti.
I was told that the airport in Port Au Prince, Haiti is in “much better shape” than after the earthquake, but it is not what the casual US traveler is used to. Customs is a huge warehouse type of building. Standing in an endless queue, passport in hand, the din of hundreds of people talking in multiple languages is deafening. After finally getting through customs, a fairly casual affair, compared to the generally cranky US Customs agents, off I go in search of my luggage. This actually is the easiest part of my travel, I had tied garish colored ribbons on both my bags, and all of the bags were just sitting out in piles ready to be grabbed by anyone who came by. There were dozens of men who apparently worked for the airport, trying to grab your bags in hopes of getting paid for carrying the luggage. I actually wound up carrying my own, but still paid several men who claimed they had helped.
When I was getting off the plane, an elderly lady appeared to be struggling with a heavy, large duffel bag, I took one handle, she took the other and we carried it together to the customs area. At which point she grabbed both handles, and with great energy and strength, somehow proceeded to dart to the head of every line. I saw her leaving the building, as I was still standing way back in a line. It still makes me smile when I think of her.
After gathering luggage the Project Medishare volunteers who had flown in that morning got into our transport and off we went for the hair-raising drive. There are no lines on the roads, apparently no stoplights, stop signs or any other rules that govern sane driving. The trip is a bit like a NASCAR race, cars darting in and out, passing on the right, the left, straight up the middle, all the drivers having the same motto “he who hesitates is lost”.
On the drive to the hospital, its hard to know what is the result of the earthquake and what is just the result of incredible poverty until you see the endless sea of dirty white tents on the side of the road. Driving by, you can see a man bathing in a small space between tents close to the side of the road. There is a grey pall of smoke and dust everywhere, I assume from the cooking fires, and the fires on the side of roads to burn all the garbage. Some nights the smell of smoke was so thick, you would think the entire city was on fire.
The street that Bernard Mev Hospital is on is a dirt road, full of ruts, potholes with abandoned cars and trucks on the side of the road. Everyone is selling something, roadside shops all up and down the street. Small kiosk type structures selling whatever; old shoes, not “gently used” shoes, but a mound of old shoes, used clothing, fruits and soda. There is a man frying sweet potatoes, and plantain in dirty grease, children and mothers lining up to buy the fried delicacies. The traffic was slower than on the main highway, but just as scary, motor scooters, and motorcycles darting in and out of the traffic, everyone honking their horns constantly. Apparently, no one is capable of getting down a road in Port-Au-Prince without the incessant horn blaring. Women and men walking with enormous loads of food, or what have you on their head, without any apparent difficulty. One day I saw man with a stack of brooms balanced on his head…. I am still impressed and cannot imagine how he managed to do that!
When our transportation arrived at the hospital there was Kathleen, waving madly at the car I was in. I don’t know who was happier to see whom. She cried, I cried and I knew I was going to be all right, and that I had not been wrong to sign up to volunteer.
The Hospital building, suffice it to say, would be condemned in the US. There is one sink for 3 rooms, the 3 rooms being the Intensive Care Unit, the Emergency Room and the Medical-Surgical ward. I use the term rooms loosely; they are 3 spaces that run together, with the combined space probably the size of my living room and dining room (and anyone who has been to my house knows we are not taking about a lot of square footage!) There are holes in the walls and the beds are old battered ER stretcher type beds, not meant for anyone to have to lie on for long periods of time. There is absolutely no privacy, no screens, no walls, if a patient has to go to the bathroom, they squat over a pan next to the bed, or walk to the outdoor toilets at the back of the buildings. The equipment is old and outdated, the x-ray machine didn’t work, so if an x-ray was needed, the patient was piled into a truck and taken elsewhere. The electrical system was not the most reliable, periodically the lights would get dimmer and dimmer, the fans would start to slow and than the power would be gone. Everyone would scramble to get their flashlights, until the lights would come back on, first dimly, the fans making an unearthly racket coming back on until everything was brightly lit again…until the next time.
I worked from 6 AM to 6 PM everyday I was there. We slept in dorm-like rooms, with 3 bunk beds. Kathleen was “dorm Mom”. She had the alarm clock and woke us all up at 5 AM or so. I would struggle awake, throw on scrubs, eat a protein bar and off I would go for another day. I would have paid a small fortune for a Starbucks Latte. How spoiled I am, that the lack of decent coffee bothered me so much.
Every morning about 630 AM, the woman who cleaned our rooms came into the hospital and prayed. She spread her arms out wide as if she was embracing the entire world. Some of the patient would lift their arms and wave their hands and prayed along with her. I have no idea what she was saying, but I each morning I felt blessed and ready to start another day.
The hospital system is vastly different in Haiti, the nursing staff is there for the “technical” stuff, giving medications, starting IV’s, changing wound dressings, the families did every thing else. Family members stayed at the bedside 24/7, sitting next to the bed on buckets, or a broken down folding chairs if they were really lucky, or just stood there, hour after hour, day after day. The family provided the sheets for the bed, the clothing the patient slept in, and the food that they ate. Husbands cared for wives, wives cared for husbands, mothers for their children, and children cared for their mothers or fathers. The family member would bathe their loved one from head to toe, gently with such obvious caring and love. If a patient didn’t have a family member to bathe them, a family member of another patient would do it. No one was neglected, they watched out for each other.
The Haitian patients and families are endlessly patient and stoic. The look of quiet resignation on the face of the woman who is told there is nothing to be done… the cancer in her stomach is to far gone, she doesn’t have long to live and the end will be agonizing. Asks “how long”, gets dressed and quietly goes home. The mother with the hideously burned baby in the ER, tears flowing silently down her face, even the look on the face of the baby is of an old woman who has seen it all and expects nothing less. The father whose baby dies goes home to build the coffin to bury his child.
There is also such joy, the staff and even the patients who break spontaneously into song. The woman with the ugly abdominal mass, still laughs joyfully at my efforts to communicate to her, and says in perfect English.. “I love you”… and gave me kisses each day on my cheek.
The volunteers were equally amazing, Kathleen there for 2 month’s, tearing a strip off the mortuary staff who didn’t treat her deceased patient with dignity…..exhausted, tearful, but still laughing. The Pediatric staff, who hand ventilated a baby from 3 o’clock in the morning until 1 PM the next day, because there was not a working ventilator, taking turns, relieving each other when too exhausted in mind and body to stand by the crib any longer.
What was my trip like? It was amazing, depressing, joyful, overwhelming, profound and life altering. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.
No comments:
Post a Comment