Day 4- The Work begins!

It was great to get started today! We were all anxious to get going this morning. None of us slept great, not only were we nervous but the barking dogs and roosters crowing all night long kept everyone from a good nights sleep.
We had a great breakfast after the morning services by father Mark. then we headed out to the hospital about 8. We had to make a detour to go to the home of one of the staff. His sister came from PoP with an injured arm and leg. We went into his house to examine her, luckily all was well and she just had a bruised knee/hip and a stiff elbow. From there we went to the hospital.
Check out the sign on the eUntrance. We met the head of Southern Haiti's medical system Dr Loussaint. There was lots of confusion about who would be doing what. There was a team from Panama, a team from Michigan, and some internist from Spain all trying to help. We managed to to team up with the team from michigan. The Spanish team seemed very frustrated, but non of them were orthopedic surgeons so there was not much for them to do.




Karmen & I headed to Fracture Clinic with Dr Clay Peimer, a hand surgeon. He was great! He got us introduced to the fx clinic staff and we hit the ground running. We saw lots of pts, most with injuries from the Earthquake. Lots of fractures that were just splinted, or open fractures that are infected. We had a great cast tech, who was a whiz with the cast saw and very fast at putting on casts. What was hard was that not everyone had xrays, and at one point the xray department ran out of film! We managed to see over 50 pts in less than 4 hours. Think the nurse who was organizing the clinic was ready to kill me, at 1pm she just said we are done and went home! Makes me really miss Christy!

Meanwhile Cynthia was in the peds clinic and saved a 21 day old that came in almost dead from dehydration. She was able to get an iv and got the kid hydrated. She saw lots of other kids with many issues.

With clinic done we headed back to the OR to Join Hector, Ron and Mona. They had a busy morning, fixing femurs, amputating, and washing out wounds. I helped the local ortho surgeon with an open fracture on a 9 year old kid. It was interesting doing this with a makita drill and using my leatherman to cut the pins!

After a long day we headed back to espwa for a shower and an amazing lasagna meal. I bought a bottle of Haitian rum before we left the hospital, we all enjoyed a drink after dinner. Maybe tonight the dogs won't be too loud.

Here is a photo I forgot to put up top . This is the recovery room. We drop the patients off and then the family has to care for them and feed them.