Farewell to Thea...

Yesterday we said goodbye to Thea... She is going back to the States for a furlough. We will miss her terribly while she's gone... at the Clinic, at the CTC, around the compound, during meals... she was always a willing helper, and a joy to be around.

Lisa says by as Thea prepares to go...

Steve gets ready to head out with his passengers.

Shana has some last words with Steve...

There they go! So long, farewell!

Pray that with Thea going back for a season, we would be able to fill in the gap she leaves. God has been very good to us so far, and we trust He'll continue to make it so!

Club foot baby update!

Hello to all you faithful supporters! It has been a few days since we gave you an update, so it is high time to do so!

Anita and Thea have been so busy with the CTC work recently, they have not spent much time at the Clinic. Today was a very busy day for the Haitian Staff, as there was only one nurse on call, and over 40 people to see! But it sounds like she was doing well, and got through everyone well.

We had a nice surprise this evening: the club foot baby came back for a visit!

Many of you probably remember him. We posted two stories about him recently. To refresh your memory, you might want to read the first by clicking here, and the following update by clicking here.

He underwent surgery and now has a brace of sorts attached to his feet. He's looking great, and is as sweet as anything :) His recovery seems to be going very well!

Here are some pictures from their visit today...

He's grown up quite a bit since last time!

You can see the apparatus on his feet that is helping correct his foot.

His mom was more than happy to have his picture taken! 

Cute little guy. I like his hair doo :)

Shana held his foot up, after his mom took it out of the brace.

Looks almost normal! What a miracle!

It's a little swollen-looking, but other than that, it could pass as 

a normal looking foot! Simply amazing...

Here he is with his mom again.

She seemed so happy and thankful...

And we are so very thankful to all of you who contributed to make this little boy's foot normal again. We are so blessed to be able to witness these kind of things, made possible by the people of God following His leading, and giving what they can.

God bless!

Beautiful Sunset

Sometimes one just has to stop and take in the beauty around them!

A sweet little girl and her grateful mother--came with a gift of eggs for the nurses!

Yes, my medicine book which gets used quite a bit! :-)

A neighbor lady was sick last week so we trekked to her house 15-20 min away to check her out.

Do check out the cholera blog again as we've had a re-surge of cholera and are up and running full force again! Also pray that we have the strength we need as we're short staffed right now.

Still hungry for more????

Here the little guy is all stitched up! Better be careful now!

It was a back breaking job--getting the dirt out and, numbing him without exciting him too much and then stitching. Seeing it was that deep and to the bone I wanted to be extra careful to have it clean. There were little bits of what appeared to be gravel that I suppose he picked up when he landed. He can be thankful that he wasn't hurt worse!

Zaboka, Anyone???

"Zaboka" is the Creole word for avocado, and this young man was way up in a tree picking this delicious fruit when he lost his footing and took the shortest path down! He ended up with this rather nasty memento of the event on his face; it was such a deep split, one could easily see all around his jawbone. Very interesting, but it sure looked ouchy!!!

In the cleaning- up process...

Ouch.

Poor little guy, he was pretty scared. But other than this wound, he was
in pretty good shape- considering...!

T

The longest process in a stitch job, is generally all the cleaning and
preparation... Here Anita is giving Lidocaine...

Oops, another piece of dirt or gravel in there!!!

Jared helping to hold the little guy down as Anita gets started...

Operation in the night...

We thought we'd give you a little taste of what it is like to do a stitching job...

The other evening we had a man and his boy come to the fence; the boy had hit his head against a rock wall while playing, and had a bad gash in his forehead.

The team got right on it.

Below are two pictures and a video. The two pictures are before and after shots, and the video is of the actual operation.

Just a warning for those of you with queasy stomachs: the video is somewhat disturbing. Watch at your own discretion...

Torrential Rains from Hurricane Irene and the Clinic

Greetings from the water soaked mountainsides of Les Palmes!

Praise the Lord, Hurricane Irene missed us by quite a distance. Though we are thankful that we evaded the full force of the storm, there is currently a battle going on with the consequent downpour of rain which accompanies hurricanes. Sometimes severe rain showers show up over one hundred miles away from the main mass of the hurricane...

Today, during one of the slow periods between monsoon-like downpours, I walked over to the clinic. Armed with my camera (wrapped up in plastic because of the sprinkles), I started up the trail. Everything was soaked. All the trees were dripping with the wetness of fresh rain, and the road was covered with mud.

After dodging puddles, small streams, and slipping on slick rocks, I arrived at the clinic...

The first thing that was apparent was the fact that there had been severe roof leakage. One of the men was mopping up the floor and the mop bucket he was using was almost full; and the floor was still covered with water.

I had heard before that the roof leaked (as I'm sure many of you have also heard) but I didn't realize it was this bad... there was almost an inch of water in the main hall; water was dripping down on the beds, and into the examination rooms.

The man emptied his bucket and began to soak up more water with his mop...

There's only one bed that doesn't have water leaking onto it; all the others get water onto them. They have to use vinyl bed covers on the mattresses, because without, they collect water and grow mold.

With the rains being so heavy, it is a daily battle for the nurses and staff to get the water under control. For the patients, it means having water dripping onto their beds, making them cold, and hampering any recovery they may be undergoing. It also means that the nurses have to watch where they put their instruments, medicine, and paperwork; it means having to take extra time to mop everything up.

For me, it once again reiterated the need for a clinic renovation.

Hopefully, all this will change this winter with the clinic remodeling project. We are hoping to expand the clinic, in addition to repairing the existing structure.

However,  in order to do this, we are still in need of financial assistance.

Would you please consider helping us with this project? If you are prompted to do so, please click the "Donate" tab at the top of the blog here.

All of us here very much appreciate your prayers and support. It was amazing to see how that, as you all were praying, this Hurricane changed its course. Sometimes it is hard for us to understand how much an impact and disaster a hurricane is for the Haitians; yet the reality is that it does affect them in a huge way...

God bless you all! Thanks for reading and helping!

-Nate