Dear Family and Friends,
I have waited a day to send this final note about my time in Jimani. Kelley and Luke helped me get the photos arranged so I can share them with any interested. I must warn you that some are gruesome so please use your best judgment in viewing them.
We left the Jimani Project Saturday, January 23 about 9 AM for the airport in Barahona. Before boarding the bus, each of our group had last minute desires. Check on this patient, get a photo of that, where’s Dr. XZY, etc. Bill Ragon and Mike Cobb had special concern for a burn patient they’d spent hours with earlier in the week. He was loaded up and set for transfer to one of the Navy hospital ships, with a helicopter due in shortly after our departure. I never did see it happen, but I do believe it did, thanks to Clint’s persistence and Caleb’s satellite link which enabled communication with the ships.
When we got to the airport in Barahona, we met a large group of firefighters from CA, “Firefighters for Christ” their shirts said, from multiple locations. They were mesmerized by Dave Vanderpool’s stories of his trips into PAP. I think that’s where they were headed, but I don’t know if they knew themselves where they’d be sleeping Saturday night. We also found the US Air Force setting up a base at the runway’s edge, for coordination of incoming flights with supplies. Sounds like the Barahona airport will be a staging area for what needs to go by road into Haiti in the coming weeks. Chuck Sutherland’s plane came in loaded with meds, etc. to put on our now empty bus for the return trip to Jimani. We found Mike Cobb’s name on some of the boxes, those had been left in Knoxville on our trip down for lack of space. So you can imagine just how hard it is to get a box of this or that from the US to Haiti. Mike’s supplies had been in the Knoxville airport since January 18.
So we had to stop in Atlanta for customs and Chuck left us for his grandchildren with the pilots to fly us on to Tennessee. I did not actually kiss the asphalt in front of his hangar, but I admit to some jumping up and down!
Now we’re all back home with thoughts of patients we left behind. Mike’s worried about a woman whose arm was amputated to free her from rubble. He had to revise the amputation twice due to skin loss and infection. Bill worries about the burn victim he got thru the longest operation done while we were there. John Williamson left his patient post emergency hysterectomy with fever, though it was declining. Neil Barry had so many patients I can’t tell who he was the most concerned for. Dave left thinking he could have gotten more injured out of PAP if he just had a bigger vehicle. Chuck, Mr. Fix-It to the end, left wondering if the broken pump for the water supply he’d correctly diagnosed as shorted out would get fixed quickly (we lost all running water at 2 AM, Saturday morning because of the fried pump). And I left worrying about I month old Annika (I had her name wrong earlier). I gave her over to Dr. Ben from Boston, and feel sure he’ll do whatever it takes to save her arm.
I am left, naturally, with some striking images from this experience. Our group shared some of these with each other Friday night over dinner. Everyone had incredible moments of unbounding joy. My own personal moment came Wednesday, January 20. I found 2 huge boxes of new sheets lying on the grass outside the hospital, a gift from only God knows who. I carried as many as I could hold, and grabbed a young volunteer to do the same. We then gave all the patients in recovery, who had been on bare mattresses only (some blood stained), clean, new white sheets. I wish I could describe the look on the faces of patients and family members. I felt like Santa Claus!
There were, of course, many episodes less than joyous. Mike Cobb explaining through an interpreter to a dying woman’s family that her only hope of survival was amputation of 3 extremities. He did the absolute best anyone could possibly have done to answer all their questions and fears. She refused and did die 24 hours later. For me, it was having to remove the burned skin from baby Annika’s forearm. It’s just a nightmare.
This last story is about Clint Doiron and faith. The Jimani project was Clint’s dream. Now, as one of the Knoxville crew pointed out, it is Clint’s Noah’s ark. He built it, and finished just in time to take on those sent there.
So when Clint went into PAP on Wednesday, he came across 2 Catholic nuns in a vehicle with injured Haitians. One was a 7 year old boy with a facial injury. Clint was sure there was a fracture and told them to come to the Jimani Project hospital. So the nuns did just that. When they arrived, the nonmedical person in charge of signing in patients told them they couldn’t leave the patients there. He basically said “there’s no room in the inn and you’ve got a van, take them on elsewhere, besides we have no one who can handle this head injury”. When Clint got back later, he was asking for the young boy’s location. I told him what I had heard had happened (I was not there, but was in the OR). He would not accept the possibility that patients he had personally promised care to had been turned away. He anxiously searched the orphanage (remember it is 2 stories with probably 400 patients and family) until he found the boy. Now I know the nuns were shunned by the “gatekeeper”, but then again I’ve had some small, personal experience with Catholic nuns in the course of my life (beginning at age 6 with the School Sisters of Notre Dame), and I know damn well you cannot tell one NO! (if you do….straight to Hell!). The nuns had essentially ignored the gatekeeper, found a nurse, and parked the patients exactly where they needed to be. Next Clint wants me to look at the boy, well it’s a bone and it is broken, right? The plastics guys looked too. Clearly there was nothing we could do at Jimani for him. But you see, Clint had promised because he had faith that doing the right thing would lead to the child’s getting the right care. By Friday, some of the volunteers (I am not sure who) had taken the child back to PAP, to the airport where the U of Miami had a field trauma hospital. They felt he needed a neurosurgeon, the one specialty they did not have available! So what did they do? Well they violated several international laws, probably dissolved our treaties with the rest of the Caribbean and Central American nations and flew the child back to their neuro pals in Miami! So I learned that it’s not just doing what’s right, but it is having the faith that when you do God is your back-up. Thanks Clint.
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| From Landry/Haiti |
Last word, remember a few of my photos are from in the OR, and may be difficult for some. Here's the link to the album.
Love,
Dad/Ed
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