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.
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The slash in the lady's arm
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| 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!
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| A young woman who came in for a post-partum check up, this was the first baby I delivered! |
~Mis Kayla
