Dear Family and Friends,
Today found me traveling from Knoxville with friend and fellow grandfather (Kelley’s father-in-law) Clint Doiron to the Dominican Republic town of Jimani near the Haitian border. This is home to Clint’s hospital/medical clinic/orphanage, the Jimani Project. The Chadasha (ancient Hebrew for “new song”) Foundation from Knoxville is the umbrella group over this. We had the gift of a private jet ride in a Sabreliner 65 for those who know what that is. The plane owner from Atlanta, Chuck Strickland, has stayed with us to help. The pilots flew back to Ft. Lauderdale and will return Saturday PM or early Sunday AM. No gas for refueling here. We rode up from the airport in Barahona in a very nice bus, think airport mini-bus, through countryside reminiscent of the leeward side of Hawaiian islands. Kit, reminds me of Waimanalo on Oahu.
Then tough stuff. Arriving here with patients and their families all over the grounds of the clinic and the orphanage which is 200 yards away. The first patient I was asked to see was a 1 month old. The doc on duty was a nephrologist, Ross Isaacs. He carried her himself the 200 yds to the hospital and into the OR. She had a crushed/burned/fractured forearm with blackened finger tips and a hugely swollen hand. A wonderful nurse anesthetist, Tim from Omaha, put her to sleep and I basically opened up her wrist where burn tissue was a tourniquet. We’ll see her in the OR again Thursday. Her mother didn’t survive multiple injuries.
It was then one fractured leg after another. We have 3 other orthopaedic surgeons here. One is professor from hospital for special surgery in NY and brought 2 residents. I helped them thru several procedures and they helped me some more.
Luke, your Dad and I then talked a promise for $125,000 C-arm fluoroscopic x-ray from a young group of guys. They bought 2 helicopters here and are flying in and out of Port-Au-Prince (PAP) for supplies and the occasional wounded. We are still working on how to make that happen fully. We may have a portable X-ray tomorrow. So far, we are going by our judgement since we have no Xray.
A lot of amputations were done here in the last 3 days. The helicopter guys tell us there are wounded in small clinics that have only nurses. Dr. Dave Vanderpool from Nashville is going to PAP tomorrow to survey that more. He’s a vascular surgeon and has been here since Friday.
There are multiple family practice docs, internists, pediatricians, a OB-GYN, all doing pre-op and post-op care. Definitely need more nurses though. Can’t keep up with all the IV’s and med needs.
Kristine, Clint sends his love. We are off to do Midnight rounds.
Love,
Dad/Ed
Clyde, feel free to send this on to all at Twin Rivers..hey you guys thanks for your support!!!
Edmund C. Landry, M.D.
Kennett Orthopaedic Center
402 Recovery Road
Kennett, MO 63857
573-888-2831
573-888-5408 (fax)
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Dr. Landry!
This is Patrick Jost, one of the residents from New York. I just got done telling my wife about the heartbreaking baby you operated on. You were amazing and so was Tim. We have many surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists who want to come and help, but I want to make sure we are needed. How can we coordinate to make sure we can be useful?
Patrick Jost
jostp@hss.edu
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