I was ready to kill the friggin rosters last night. I need a pellet gun to scare them away! No one slept very well because of the noise. We headed to town early in the hope of meeting the seaplane that was bringing in supplies and picking up the Michigan team. But there was no plane in the bay when we got there. We headed to the hospital to get started on another busy day. Hector started off with a distal radius fracture, while I worked on a distal tib/fib fracture. Did I mention that we had no power and no airconditioning in the OR! Not fun! Ron, Mona And cynthia all pitched in to help get everythng done.
It goes without saying that both fxs were from January 12th, bad mal reductions. With what little equipment we have we were able to fix them. It was hard to take my patient back to his "room" only to find that his room was on the floor in the hallway! His family was waiting with food to take care of him, he had been waiting 5 days to have his surgery!
We tried to do as many cases as we could today. We saw lots of people between cases and were able to add on a few cases that really needed to be fixed.
The most heart wrenching was the cousin of Dr Alexi's. She was injured in PoP when she was crushed in a nuDilding collapse. She had it looked like she had compartment syndrome in her leg. She said at 8 days after the earthquake a doctor did fasciotomies to save her leg! for those of you who are not medical, compartment syndrome is when the muscle in your leg is injured and starts to swell, it swells so much that it kills the muscle and nerves in the area of the swelling. Normally we treat this within a few hours, after that there is not much we can do to save the leg. This poor woman is a beautiful 27 year old, but her leg was insensate from the knee down. Dr. Alexi was in a horrible position, someone did an ultrasound that showed the arteries still open, so they hoped to save her leg. It was fairly obvious that we would not be able to save her leg. He decided to try to save her leg. I worry that she will get septic, we will follow her every day to see how she does.
We fixed an infected comminuted femur fx and a 2 week old open humerus fracture. It didn't seem like we did enough but writing about it it does seem like a lot.
Another team showed up today, they are from Atlanta, turns out the Ortho guy did the same sports fellowship as me 2 years after me. Will be good to have more hands. Wish I could do something for the OR staff, they are really working hard and putting up with our team. I think this is more than they have ever done.
There are lots of rumors about what is going on in Haiti, the lack of housing for refugees seems like the most important. The rainy season is not to far away. The other disturbing story is about guys going around in trucks offering kids food and then abducting them, presumably for child slavery which is rampant here in Haiti.
Guess I'll head to bed, maybe I'll get some sleep tonight!
We tried to do as many cases as we could today. We saw lots of people between cases and were able to add on a few cases that really needed to be fixed.
The most heart wrenching was the cousin of Dr Alexi's. She was injured in PoP when she was crushed in a nuDilding collapse. She had it looked like she had compartment syndrome in her leg. She said at 8 days after the earthquake a doctor did fasciotomies to save her leg! for those of you who are not medical, compartment syndrome is when the muscle in your leg is injured and starts to swell, it swells so much that it kills the muscle and nerves in the area of the swelling. Normally we treat this within a few hours, after that there is not much we can do to save the leg. This poor woman is a beautiful 27 year old, but her leg was insensate from the knee down. Dr. Alexi was in a horrible position, someone did an ultrasound that showed the arteries still open, so they hoped to save her leg. It was fairly obvious that we would not be able to save her leg. He decided to try to save her leg. I worry that she will get septic, we will follow her every day to see how she does.
We fixed an infected comminuted femur fx and a 2 week old open humerus fracture. It didn't seem like we did enough but writing about it it does seem like a lot.
Another team showed up today, they are from Atlanta, turns out the Ortho guy did the same sports fellowship as me 2 years after me. Will be good to have more hands. Wish I could do something for the OR staff, they are really working hard and putting up with our team. I think this is more than they have ever done.
There are lots of rumors about what is going on in Haiti, the lack of housing for refugees seems like the most important. The rainy season is not to far away. The other disturbing story is about guys going around in trucks offering kids food and then abducting them, presumably for child slavery which is rampant here in Haiti.
Guess I'll head to bed, maybe I'll get some sleep tonight!
Steve, child slavery and prostitution are common scenerios in PaP, all of Haiti in fact. It may be worse now, with no parents to intervene. Great work you all are doing. These acts of kindness, sharing your wealth of knowledge and fine skills will forever be vetted in your hearts. Thanks for sharing on this blog as well. Rhonda and Kiss to Karmen....
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