It feels good to get back to normal life here in Haiti after being back in the States to visit family and friends! I thoroughly enjoyed seeing my new nephew and just being with family and friends. I got to experience the cold! My least favorite thing in the states🤪.
We've been having some pretty full clinic days and some very stressful days! I think the most stressful thing for me working in the medical field here in Haiti is finding hospitals to transfer our patients to. We are a small, out patient clinic so the patients that have needs we can't take care of here need to be sent to a bigger hospital that can take care of them.
Right now we are trying to get one of our regular bandage patients, Selik to a hospital that can amputate his foot. He has been coming here for years with a wound that just has not been healing even after being to several different hospitals and being on tons of meds. He is in alot of pain and its getting worse, and he's begging us to take him somewhere to amputate. So within the next couple days we are going to try to get him into a hospital that can help him.
On Thursday we had a mom come in, in premature labor. We are not equipped here to take care of premature babies and usually transfer but this time the mother was progressing quite fast and after discussing our options we decided its safer to keep her here than deliver a premature baby on the road. As the closest hospital we could transfer her to where they would be able to give her proper care was atleast 5 hrs away. This dear mother quietly and quickly delivered a premature baby girl. I was surprised at the baby's size 5lbs 5oz. I was expecting she would be smaller! We worked on her for about 2 minutes before she gave us a good strong cry and opened her eyes! We kept her on a heating pad and oxygen and she seemed to be doing fine, we checked on her regularly. On Friday morning when I went to check on her I was alarmed at her color and breathing. We immediately evaluated to situation and decided to transport... but we didn't realize how difficult of a time we would have trying to get her to a hospital that had what she needed. We finally got her loaded on the machine and headed out to a hospital that had already said that they were too full to take her but we were out of options and couldn't lose anymore time... she died about an hour out the trail. My heart was filled with pain as I prayed for the mother and tried to comfort her. I struggled with asking God, "Why?". When we try so hard to do everything we possibly can....but I know God has a reason for everything.
Recently we made the trip to the Fondeblanc hospital with Patrick. He had been having stomach issues and needed a new wheelchair.
We are excited about the work starting on the new birth center! Patrick's house will need to be taken down and new one has been recently built for him. So today there was a "work day" cleaning his house and around the house before he moves in.
We are having alot of patients right now with scabies... there seems to be an epidemic of them right now! its an intensely itchy skin infestation caused by a mite. This little baby has a mild case of scabies.
-Mis Marcile
