Morning wake up call… “bang, bang, bang…bang, bang, bang!”

 I lay in bed and think, “oh, probably the girls bringing the routine vessels of soup for Sunday morning; Janell will take care of them.”

 The sound reverberates again, “bang, bang, bang… bang, bang, bang!”

 My thoughts continue… “Well I am on call today, it could be a medical emergency.” I pull myself from the bed; throw on a skirt and a hoodie and after grabbing a key march to the gate (still expecting the soup girls). Well my decision to crawl out of bed was warranted, at the gate I found  a man a woman informing me there was someone at clinic who had fallen and had a “blese” (injury) on their head and arm. “Can they talk?” I asked. “Can they walk?” Wanting to make sure the injured person was not unconscious or anything.

“Oh, yes they are at the clinic.”

“Ok, I am coming!” I respond. On returning to the house I trade out my hoodie for a scrub top and put my hair up in a decent fashion. By 6:40AM I am on my way to clinic to assess the situation. I sure enough did find a blese on her arm and a small one on her head.  The gash on her forearm did not line up with the idea of a fall it looked more like a knife cut, but I chose not to investigate then. I repaired it with 8 or 9 stiches, and Mali butterflied the small cut near her eye. Both wounds are healing up beautifully.

Thankfully the rest of my Sunday was very relaxed and peaceful, there were no other clinic calls.

The slash in the lady's arm

 



Stitching up

 We have continued to have fairly busy days at clinic, no one is too busy planting or harvesting currently so they have time to come and have their maladies cared for.  The blood pressure program has kept up its usual steady flow of people each day; I enjoy my work with them. I like being able to give nutritional guidance for lowing your blood pressure rather than just handing out prescriptions, and the Haitian population seems very appreciative.

Thursday was a bit of a stressful day for all of us, one of our white nurses was feeling very ill and we ended up sending her out to a larger hospital. Clinic was a little hectic a big crowd to take care of, missing one of our nurses, two or three cots coming in but with God’s help and team work we made it through. Then that afternoon we got a “gully washer” of rain storm!! Nearly 4 inches of rain fell in about 2 hours! We ended up with flooding in both houses! First of all our girls’ house started flooding because we had water standing in front of the house and the front door was open, so where did the water go but inside! After that was all cleaned up Hans had went back over to the main house, a few minutes later we hear a radio call “Girls, girls!” Hans was calling in need of assistance, we assumed it was because of flooding once again so we grabbed the already soiled towels and dashed to the other house. Sure enough our assumptions were correct, more flooding! We made a party out of it and laughed! What else could you do!

A young woman who came in for a post-partum check up, this
was the first baby I delivered!

 Thanks for all your prayers for us down here, we need them and notice them!


~Mis Kayla