Time flies saver each moment.

    Wow time is flying! Have I already been here 5 months? seems like time is going way too fast! I've really been enjoying the work here! Today I took our friend with the foot wound home, it almost seemed like saying goodbye to a staff  member since he had been at clinic for so long. We are all happy to see him doing well and to get back to life as he knows it.
  
The other man who was staying in the hospital room with him passed away, after we did everything we could and saw he still wasn't getting better. We talk to them about transferring him to a different hospital because he was in need of cardiac surgery, they couldn't see their way through that, so they just wanted to go home. He lived for about 3 weeks and died. Some of us were able to go to the funeral, It made his madam very happy to see us!
    The past two weeks we've had a dentist team here, they were pulling teeth, (lots of teeth!!!) doing fillings and one of them was making dentures. They were a great team and got a lot of work done!
      Just lately I was blessed by something we as humans might tend to call a smaller thing. One day as going about our normal clinic duties a wrinkled face smiley old man came in to get a bandage for a wound on his leg which was very old and smelly!! Sometimes you're not quite sure how to feel about a person and if I based the way I felt about him off of his smell and the way he looked I wouldn't have wanted to be around him! but the thought hit me what if I got to do this for Jesus? I would love to do a stinky smelly bandage like this for Jesus! I thought a little, I am doing this for Jesus, how different it is seeing things through that light! I noticed his feet were very dry with deep cracks in them so I got some lotion and lathered him up. He sat on the bed with the big smile on his face and then he looked at me and said "Dr I'm very happy". It made my day. I pray that I never see people as insignificant. We see patient after patient, I want to see each one as special and unique and help them to the best of my ability. (Ben)

First of all, I apologize for the late blog post. But, in my defense, we haven’t had WiFi for several days now, making posting impossible. There, I feel better now. :-)
We had the dentist team here again for the last almost-3 weeks and they were very busy pulling and repairing people’s teeth. It was really fun watching them work together on other people’s teeth...HUGE emphasis on the word “other”. :-) I’m no dentist but by all appearances, they’re doing a fantastic job!
They left this morning and things are feeling pretty empty. A huge thank-you to them for all their hard work and the fun times we had together.
I’m posting a couple photos. The first one is of me, removing a 6cm piece of a coffee plant from a mans leg. He said it’d been there for 3 years. Seems like a mildly stretched story to me but from the way it looked, I’m awfully tempted to believe it. I love removing splinters and this was the most enjoyable one to date. So, if you ever need a splinter removed, come over and I’ll be happy to take it out. Don’t wait 3 years and I probably won’t have to use a scalpel to do it. :) The second photo is of the dentist and an assistant working. Enjoy. :)



Until next time, Mis Emma.

Be thankful

There are so many things to be thankful for! As I think right now, I'm healthy, my body is intact, I have enough food to eat, I have clothes to wear that aren't worn out and on top of all that I have lots of friends. I look around me and see neighbors who have much less than I do and yet are very happy and grateful for what they have. It reminds me to be thankful. We have so much to be thankful for. I want to always keep this in mind and never be unthankful.                          
     For the last 3 weeks we've had a man staying in our hospital room with a big open wound on his foot. He’s a very cheerful man, despite his malady and keeps the people in the hospital room upbeat and laughing. he's healthy and it seems a ‘lil different having a healthy person staying in the hospital room, we're really enjoying having him around!
     His wound started from stepping on a large thorn that grows on trees around here. He tried getting help from another clinic but when his foot was not making any improvement, he showed up here. His foot was very infected and beginning to rot. He showed up here approximately 12 days after stepping on the thorn.    
Here’s a photo of his foot the first day after we’d already done some debriding.
     We’ve been debriding and rebandageing his foot once or twice a day and have been seeing lots of improvement! It’s been really exciting watching the foot grow back and see new life form.
    The man's name is Remy and has become a good friend to us. He would profess to be a Christian. If you think of it, pray for him, his life has had lots of changes.
     If I can get the story straight, he was planning to get married and then someone in his family died over the same time they had planned to get married and the wedding was put off. Also, his girlfriend had their first baby the day he arrived here. Two days ago, his girlfriend came to visit for the first time. He was all smiles and super proud holding his baby for the first time. We were too. 😉 He doesn’t plan on going home until his foot is healed completely. I am thankful for that! Pray that it would progress quickly and that infection would not set in. God has been so good and so faithful in giving us the patience we need and I've really been enjoying bandaging his foot. Please keep us all in your prayers. We daily need God to refill us with his love. until next time, Ben😉

Here’s a photo of all of us clinic staff with him and his girlfriend and their child along with his girlfriends sisters.

This is what his foot looks like currently.

Here he is a photo of him helping do his own bandage a week or so ago.

This is a week after he came. Every time we’re tempted to feel discouraged about progress, we look at photos like this one. :)

Our miracle from God

   It started out as a normal gate knock- if any gate knock at 3 in the morning can be considered normal. We walked down to clinic where we found a lady who very much looked and sounded like she was ready to have a baby. After getting them inside in the clinic and checking the lady out we found the baby would not be born quite yet. Her blood pressure was alarmingly high so we gave her something for that and continued to monitor her as a new day dawned sunny and beautiful here in the mountains. We did decide to go back to the house for a bit to get more properly ready for the day and to eat a bite.

   Clinic started as usual for the day and I for sure thought we would soon have a baby! Her blood pressure was not coming down like we had hoped it would so we continued medication for that and also gave something to increase contractions. The lady was not being overly cooperative with us and so much of our time was spent coaching her and trying to get things to move along more quickly.

   We were grateful to have Dr. Shepherd there with us, a doctor who had come on a team to work at clinic for a few days. His experience was extremely helpful and we would later find out, invaluable. 

   After what felt like hours- actually it was hours- of coaching and attempting to get this baby to be born, the baby was here- but with the cord around the neck. They quickly removed the cord but instead of a crying, flailing baby there was only silence. The doctors immediately started chest compressions and mouth-to- mouth. Time seemed to stand still... they worked on the little dear for a good 15 minutes trying to get a heartbeat. The room felt tense as we waited for a breath, anything to know she was going to make it. Finally after what felt like hours,  the baby did start to take some breaths on its own and hope filled our hearts as our prayers continued to ascend to the Heavenly Father. I cannot describe the feelings that were going on in that tiny room. I only know that God looked down on our clinic, heard the prayers of our hearts to please bring life to this child and help her to live! God answered our prayers with a miracle right before our very eyes.

   But that’s not the end of the story. They had moved the baby to another area in the room to continue oxygen and monitoring. I happened to glance over at the mom only to see her having a full blown seizure. It was another very scary moment... but God once again brought her through ok!

  Once the baby was more stable, I sat and held her. I held the oxygen to her and listened to her little gaspy breaths. She still had not cried at all so every now and then we would try to get her a little upset:) We also put an IV in her to give her some fluids and she even sucked some on a bottle which amazed us all!!

We continued to monitor both mama and baby for a few days and we are so happy to say that they are both doing extremely well! She acts like a normal baby and has a wonderful set of lungs!:) God is so good! Today we watched them leave and I can’t describe the joy of seeing the happy parents with their beautiful baby girl... the Dad is so proud and the mom is the perfect picture of happy first time motherhood. And the baby...well I don’t think you could get any cuter!!:)

  The dad had asked Kayla and I to name the baby and so we chose the name, Jiana Hope. Jiana means God is gracious. 

  Friends, God does answer prayer and He certainly did for us! It also amazes me to think that God knew all along that those doctors would be at our clinic on February 20 and how much we would need them here! 

If you don’t believe in miracles, well I hope you do now, because God gave us a miracle that day right before our very eyes! 

Gods plan, the best plan.

“We need you Mis. My dad fell of a horse and his pain is eating him”. I smiled to myself at his way of explaining his dads pain and assured him that we’d come see what was up. Ben, Autumn and I ran down to clinic to find him on a typical ‘lil make-shift cot right outside of our clinic gate along with a crowd of people. We transferred him to our emergency room and did a quick assessment. He had a large hematoma on his forehead and when Autumn moved his arm his upper arm showed an “elbow” where there isn’t supposed to be one...a very broken humerus and none of us found it humorous. :) We set and splinted it and put him in our hospital room for the night and Ben transferred him to a hospital in Grand Goâve early the next morning to get it casted.
That same afternoon, he shows back up at clinic on a moto...just like he left. No cast, just the same splint we’d put on him. I think every single one of us groaned. He had an ex-ray from the hospital but said that the hospital in Grand goâve told him that they don’t have a Dr who can set and cast bones for 2 more days and advised him to go back to the blans (whites).
Backing up a ‘lil, in the meantime we figured out that he was the father of two brothers who had robbed our mission a couple years ago. They had broken into one of our houses while everyone was gone and taken quite a few electronics and cash. Since then, different ones have been able to become friends with them.
Anyways, so when their father came back to clinic that afternoon, we had no choice but to cast his arm. None of us current nurses had ever done a cast before so it wasn’t the speediest process ever. We had had a long day and I think most of us were tempted to feel very discouraged and pretty annoyed at the lameness of the other hospital. We had invited company for supper and we would’ve all loved to be enjoying good food with them.
The dear ‘lil old man was incredibly tough and had an amazing pain tolerance. He had to have been in a ton of pain but he just sat there and grinned as I cocked his hat to the side (just cause that’s what I do to people who wear hats to clinic. For no reason, it’s just a weird Emma-thing and I’m not even embarrassed about it). His wife just sat there with a very calm and concerned look on her face the entire time and his son (the one who robbed us) was a huge help as we casted not only once, but twice. We casted the first time and it didn’t seem quite right. I had this weird gut feeling about it and Kayla and Ben seemed like they did too so we proceeded to remove it and start over. Anyways...in case you didn’t know, casts are super hard to remove without the proper equipment. It took probably an hour to get it completely removed before we could start over. His son was a huge help to us. He did most of the cast removal and we actually had a lot of fun. We did the 2nd cast and were MUCH more satisfied with how it turned out.
As they were leaving, and I stood there pondering the last 24 hours events, all the confusion made sense. The robber, the very un-Christian family, The broken arm, the lame hospital and the Gods love in our hearts. God gave us the opportunity to spend several hours working closely with them and serving them in that way and looking back, it was beautiful. Yep, there was quick research and quite a bit of sweat too but I think it was Gods plan and I feel honored to be a part of His kingdom.

Look past the unknown and allow God to use you. Lend your ear and offer that cup of cold water to the least of these today, friends. It’s worth it. Very worth it - I promise.
I’m posting a few photos of Ben, Kayla and I doing the cast. Enjoy. :)
-Mis Emma

Miracles❤

She slipped into my hands with a shower of miconium staining and amniotic fluid. Her lips were tinged blue and her chest lay still. The minutes seemed like hours as we rubbed her and blew air into her tiny mouth, willing her to breathe. With the aid of breaths and oxygen, her chest began to rise and fall all by itself. And she broke the silence with the most beautiful cry ever. Miracles happen to those that believe. And our miracle came in the form of a tiny little girl that Mis Emma named Nevaeh.
A bit of background on this baby and her parents. She is the 7th and only living child. All the other babies died between 5-7 months of gestation. Cause of death isn't exactly known. Quite possibly the mother had preeclampsia, as she did with this baby as well. It was exciting to see her get past 7 months and still have her baby. She was afraid though and we worked to keep her blood pressure at a safe level. In the end, everything turned out ok. I felt honored to have been able to deliver that little girl and help to give her breath. God gave us a miracle right before our eyes, and we're so thankful to him for giving us wisdom through the whole experience. We couldn't have done it on our own. Everytime I see a birth, I'm struck again by how amazing a new life is. There's nothing quite like holding a slippery perfect little human in your hands and listening to them cry. It's all so worth it. Every sleepless night. The days when your hair stands on end, your eyes are red rimmed and basically crossed, and your brain just gave up on trying to understand the language. Nursing can be hard and heartbreaking. But I wouldn't trade my blood splattered flipflops and sweaty days for the cleanest, coolest medical facility in the states. Haiti and its people have stolen my heart. And I'm proud to call this tiny island home.
As a side note, I'm Autumn🤗 I was down here for 2 months and worked in the pharmacy. My gallbladder decided to give up on me and I was in the states for 4 months having it removed and recovering. Now I'm back working in the prenatal program. And I honestly couldn't be happier 😊❤
Until next time.
Bondye beni ou💙
Mis Autumn💊

“Ding ding ding” -it’s a very familiar sound around here. Its the sound that could mean basically anything. It could mean that there’s a neighbor kiddo at our gate asking for the same thing he’s been asking for all afternoon and the afternoon before, or it could be someone alerting us of an emergency at clinic. It’s often the sound that makes us mentally groan...ok yes, I’ll admit it, I have audibly groaned. 

 We’ve been staying pleasantly busy at clinic. We’ve been delivering lots of babies and none of us are sad about it. In fact, just knock on our gate and tell us there’s a laboring mother on the way and you’ll make any one of us happy. :-) While you’re at it, check your clock to make sure it’s not supper time and you’ll make us even happier. We’re not picky, it’s just a thought. :-) 

The miracle of each new birth never ceases to amaze me and being able to help brand new, slippery, and hopefully screaming babies into this world is highly exhilarating. I’ve learned to LOVE the sound of a new-borns cry-especially if I don’t hear it right away. We’ve had a couple of those in the last couple weeks (check out the last post if you haven’t already) and God’s faithfulness and strength is those times is beyond amazing. We serve an awesome miracle-working God. 

We like suturing too so if you ever need sewn up, those gate knocks are welcomed too...just make sure it’s a nice clean cut, those are funnest (I AM aware that that’s not a word). Again, not picky at all.  

 

Here’s a pic of the 3 other nurses besides myself with a baby they had just delivered. 

This is our ‘lil burn guy. I wish I had a pic of his burn when he first came in to show you all. Someone apparently accidentally dumped a boiling pot of soup on him and the side of his face, neck and down the side of his trunk were burned badly. He’s a brave ‘lil trooper and comes every day to get rebandages. His burn is healing up beautifully and we may or may not be getting attached to him. :-)

And this is me...and I think it’s self explanatory. 

Once again, pray for us and thanks for praying. Until next time. -Mis Emma