You never know what you'll see next!

This is a case that came in yesterday--a 14 day old baby with an odd lump on it's head.  We're not sure what is is, but it's beyond us so we told them that they need to go out to a bigger hospital.  The lump started a few days after birth and has been growing.  Other than that the baby seemed fine.   

  "Good-morning, scrubs. I hope you have more energy than I do at two o'clock in the morning. Because I hear Anita calling me on the radio." It's Thursday, and there's a lady at the clinic waiting to welcome a baby into the dark world. I grab a flashlight.
    Then the scrubs and I walk out to join Anita in the courtyard. There are plenty of people talking and sleeping in the clinic entrance. They wait and watch with us until the baby comes about three-thirty in the morning. The little girl is decidedly cute to compensate for our lack of sleep. She is a good six pounds plus an ounce. Janell and Elissa bathe her and bundle her up. We are glad for their help as we get the mom back on her feet. Anita is just putting the last odds and ends away from the birth when the mom comes back in. She tweaks Anita and I under the chin and thinks she is ready to walk the four or more hours home with her friends. "Thank-you," she says.

The nurses, assistants, and the new little baby

    Anita and I shake our heads. But why not? If she's feeling up to it, what white people can stop her? As for us, five-thirty sounds like a good time to go back to bed.


    Later on, during our calm clinic day on Thursday, Breanna was shaking her head over an ugly elbow abscess. Mis Leda had lanced it open on Wednesday, but it was still looking rather angry. Something needed to be done. Mis Leda kindly came over and helped Breanna cut away some of the awful infection covering the deep bottom side of the hole. Although you see only the elbow on the picture, you can imagine how the face of someone with a knife carving into their flesh could look...

Breanna working at the infected elbow

   
As the clinic day comes to end, we have time to think about the lady who came to the clinic earlier this week. As she lounged around on the hospital bed waiting for delivery, we began to suspicion that something was strange about this case. Twins? Maybe? Possibly?
    After more inspection and more questions, the lady told us that she was indeed having twins. Interesting news at this point of the game. We decided it was a good time to send her out to the hospital down at T-Goave.


     Friday ended our official clinic week with Michael and Virginia back on staff. We just about needed to ask them to introduce themselves, after their long absence with the mobile clinic and hurricane.

All in all you can see we've had a very full week!

~Mis Rhoda

Just a snap shot of a stretcher being carried in to the clinic on Fri

 with an older man who was too weak to walk

   

   

-My Week at the Clinic-

   Hurricane Sandy welcomed us to Haiti with torrents of rain and wind. We made it back to the mission just in time for the rain to begin in earnest. And there we sat. Clinic was closed for the next two days while we sopped up buckets of water and tried to stay dry. By day three we were doing push-ups and jumping jacks to ease the lack of exercise.=) We ended up deciding to just get wet and donned huge rain coats for a hike. We got soaked to the skin but it was definitely worth it. =) 

 The rest of the week was full of some pretty incredible happenings. A women with eclampsia came in seizing seriously. We strung the oxygen cord out thru the people to where she lay on the ground and kept checking her oxygen levels before they took her out to town.

 We had four laboring women come in the last two days. Two,beautiful, baby girls were born. Anita discovered the one women was carrying twins and sent her out to town...and lady # four's results are still pending! 

I was amazed at the amount of infections and abscesses.  The nurses do an amazing job of stitching and cleaning terrible looking wounds. 

Rhoda, Emma, Janelle, and I on our hike. 

I spent some time in the pharmacy trying to help the Haitian pharmacist distribute meds. We communicated by signs and wonders. =) 

    Effadel came to the clinic around six weeks ago with a terrible abcess on his leg. He almost died as the infection went systemic. This week he made incredible progress. His legs are down to normal size and both abcesses are closing up and healing nicely. 

                                   

   Rhoda cleaning up an infected foot. 

~Katie Lapp

New Baby Girl!

This morning a lady in labor came into the clinic on a stretcher. After about an hour or so, a baby girl entered the world! I was reminded of the miracle of each new baby that comes into the world!!

The baby weighed 4 Lbs. 3 oz. 

                                             I got the privilege of bathing and dressing the baby!

                                                     Me holding the Baby, so clean and fresh=).

                                                                       Anita with the baby.                                                                            

    Mother and Baby soon after the birth. They left for home soon after this picture was taken.   ~Emma H.

Written Oct 30, 2012

Emergency Run To. . .

. . . well, to the landslide.

From the vantage point of the clinic roof, this is what could be seen yesterday mid morning. A stretcher was carried in with a pregnant lady who was seizing.  

As we gathered more information, we learned that she was a 17 or 18 year old young lady who was around 8 months pregnant. She quite obviously had eclampsia.  She had been seizing since early that morning.  

  We quickly took blood pressure, checked oxygen saturation, and started monitoring her.  It wasn't long until she was having another seizure.  We shortly had them move the stretcher so we could get her on oxygen. 

She stayed on oxygen, and we continued to monitor her oxygen saturation.  

It was obvious that we needed to take her to T-Goave, but we had some hurtles to deal with before we could set out.  After Hurricane Sandy went through last week our trail was again rendered impassable by anything but motorcycles and ATVs.  Even the Bobcat/Gator machines couldn't go through.  We tried making phone calls to see if we could have someone come up from T-Goave and pick up our patient on the other side of the blocked areas, but our cell service was out, too.  Finally we decided that we needed to leave, and they'd have to carry her again when we got to the landslide if no one could meet us.  

So we set off, and sent a few men ahead on a moto to meet us and help carry the stretcher later on.  About half an hour into our trip we had to stop for a bit as she had another seizure.  When she'd have a seizure, I'd turn the oxygen up a little.  

Finally we arrived at the landslide.  Then came the fun part as we tried to convince them that NO we wouldn't try going over the landslide.  

Here is the landslide just in front of us, and a work crew was working on it. 

This is the crew heading off with the stretcher.

Busy Day

     It's Friday! I walk out the gate and say "Good-morning" to Grandpa Harold.
     "Are you ready for another busy day?" he wonders.
     I tell him I hope I am.
     "Ready or not, it's coming," he jokes.
     And it did. I walked over to the clinic and Fre Adolph is already there passing out numbers to the waiting people. He seems a little tired. Maybe he is thinking, "Where are Noes and Direk?" Because they aren't there yet.
     We start off our day with singing "Amazing Grace" in Creole. I don't help though. I am watching Mis Anita bandage up the hip abscess guy, and I like to see how she stuffs the drain in the wound. Then Noes leads the waiting patients in prayer. I can help with that. It works just as well in English. Plus I think we might need the prayers.
     I had a fun morning doing my usual blood pressures and wrapping up a couple bandages between rounds of people. We have our little laughs together when some of the patients have a mind of their own. Direk says a long string of unrepeatable Creole and usually the person straightens up and behaves themselves. If not, Adolph says a few more muttery somethings. By this time Noes has wandered in from the hallway. He tells the person to "Sit down, or Go Outside," or whatever, and when they finally get the point, everyone rolls their eyes and laughs. After a sigh, Nes walks outside to see how many people are left to see today.

    This time there are a nice amount  of patients waiting outside yet at noon. 

Adolph and Direk holding up #71!

     Even busy days end at clinic. By around 1:30 Direk and Adolph added up the totals for the day and happily held up number 71. I'd say, "Good job, Team! Enjoy your week-end. Because hard telling, Monday might be a busy day, too, ready or not."
   
~Mis Rhoda

UP and Going

This morning we were very happy to send our malaria patient on her way.  After 4 liters of fluid, IV and 3 doses of chloroquine, she was in much better shape.  It's always so encouraging to see progress.  

(L to R)  Mother (who was sick), her aunt and baby