Update on a patient...

Remember that young man that jumped down a tree, landing squarely on his machete? 

Well, he came back the other day for a checkup and things are looking great!

Seems like it is healing up very well!

Michael and Anita examining the cut:

They decided to keep some stitches in, since it was still wanting to separate in a few places.

We expect him to make a full recovery!

More picking being done...

There have been so many incidents with picks you would almost wonder if there was a serial-picker going around, causing mayhem and panic amongst the inhabitants of Aleg.

Well, it turns out, there is no one person inflicting all these injuries: with everyone working their gardens, it's just Murphy's law in full motion! :)

As you might have gathered already, this person came to the gate with a pick-inflicted injury. This time it was on one of his fingers...

Breanna was on call that day. When she was called out to the clinic she found it to be a little much for just a band-aide. They decided it needed to be stitched!

Anita cleaned the wound further and got ready to stitch. 

Wow. Laid open, clean to the bone!

Further cleaning, getting dirt (and such) out of the wound and sterilizing it.

Team work!

Anita and Breanna work together to get lidocaine into the syringe...

Stitching...

Unfortunately the man was slightly drunken and kept moving his arm around.

So Breanna held his arm still!

Finally they finished!

Good job, team!

After bandaging it up, the man was able to go home!

He has a checkup scheduled soon for his stitches to be taken out.

Personnel Perspective...

Once in a while I like to get inside people's days and see what goes on; hear how they feel about it and what makes their job, well... their job!


This time I asked Breanna (one of our nurses down here) to write about her everyday life in the clinic and give us some perspective on what goes on between all those spectacular injuries and stitch jobs! For those of us that look at the blog from Stateside, it's easy to forget that for every unique and extreme situation we encounter down here there are, perhaps, 75-100 normal, everyday cases that come into the clinic- some colds, the flu, an ear ache, a pulled muscle, parasites, a few headaches... simple and routine things that bring an otherwise exciting job down life's lower echelons of monotony.


But isn't almost everything in life that way? People go around looking for their "dream" job, only to find that it, too, becomes commonplace and almost boring! Hence the reason we can't rely on earthly situations and circumstances for our joy in life- the only real source of joy can ONLY be found in our relationship with the Lord Jesus. Walking with Him throughout the day, talking with Him, reading and loving His Word and telling the great news of what He's done for us to others.


Well, enough of my little preface! Without further delay, here is Breanna's account of her daily life in the Aleg medical clinic...

***

~July 13th, 2012~
When Nathan asked me to come up with a blog post – the subject being, “What Breanna does in the clinic” – I felt like, oh no, this is sort of a difficult task, because I don’t feel like what I do would make anything close to an intriguing blog post! Especially speaking of my job on a conventional level. However, I have to give it my best shot.  

I believe I will just write about my day today…that’s about as average as I can get…


I arrived at 8:30am.  As is typical, I began my morning by first of all greeting the Haitian workers one by one with a handshake and exchanging greetings.  Then I collected all of my usual cleaning and bandaging supplies for my “leg man” before bringing him inside.  You have probably seen pictures on this site of the man with the large leg infection.   After assembling my supplies, I went outside and hailed him in.  I went through my daily routine of cleaning and re-bandaging his leg.  
It’s healing up great! It’s fun to see the progress its making. Something that is very obvious if I look at a picture first and then compare it to its current state!  The day he first came in, I was shocked at the smell (!!!!), its decomposing and how utterly gross it was. But we are all so impressed now – it’s a miracle how the body can heal itself.  

After completing that, I noticed that I have some time before clinic officially begins and regular patients enter the clinic.  I decided to bring in my next project – a little boy that had come in last evening when I was on call – he had bent the toenail on his big toe completely backwards.  OUCH!! Yesterday I had cleaned and bandaged it – it was obviously quite sensitive then. 

Today, I trimmed the toenail back to as far as I could, and cleaned it again – as I was cleaning it, of course it hurt some – but he was so cute, he wouldn’t move his foot away from me at all, he would simply slowly bend his toe away from me if I pressed too hard, and he’d wrinkle up his nose a little. I’d smile at him every once in awhile and tell him “preske fini” (almost finished) and he’d grin right back with such trusting, adorable little eyes…I tried to go at it very gently. Soon we were done, I bandaged him again, and he gave me a big smile and hopped off his chair. I told him to come back again tomorrow.

Clinic officially was beginning.  The nurses were ready to give consultations, so I then went to my main job – taking blood pressures, temperatures, and keeping general order in the waiting room.  After I did that for a time, the “foot lady” arrived. Our names for people are sort of…”original”, ha! You can read about her on this blog as well.  
Her calluses around the wound periodically need removed with a scalpel, and today it was getting to the place where it needed to get done. So I did that, which took awhile, it was sort of a fun little project. Shortly after finishing her foot, I stuffed an abscess on “the neck guy” – he had an infected lymph node that turned into an abscess that mainly Michael has been packing every day for awhile.  Today I got the job though.

After that, I returned to taking vitals…popping in to see what interesting cases Michael and Anita have…being an extra set of hands here and there…Both of them have been wonderful teachers to me since my arrival here 4 months ago (to the day!). Medicine in Haiti is unique in and of itself.  I have learned much and attribute that largely to their patience and willingness to explain things and answer questions. 

At about 12:00pm, all the patients were seen, cared for, medications handed about by the pharmacy, and we were ready to close for the day!! Virginia was on call – which means that any after hour emergencies are for her to oversee.  Everything went very smoothly and for that we are so thankful!
~Breanna  

Some everyday scenes from the clinic...

Anita doing consultations in her room.

Mis Joceline also doing consultations in her room. 

Zita (Madam Jon Marc) helps out in the pharmacy.

The waiting room :) 

A lesson in jumping- look before you leap...

It was promising to be a nice, relaxed Saturday evening with supper being finished and the dishes washed. We were about to settle down into a time of fellowship when we heard the distinct sound of tapping at the gate. The sun had just disappeared behind the mountain, still radiating and we could see several men outside. Someone went out to see what they needed and was handed a note. It was from Mis Leida, one of the Haitian nurses, saying that one of the men had a bad cut on his foot and she didn't have the supplies to stitch it up at her place. So Anita and Breanna headed out to address the problem- so much for the relaxed evening :)

When they got the man into the clinic and unwrapped his bandaged foot they found what had been described in the note. Anita asked him a few questions and the story began to come out...

Ah, yes, yet another incident involving a machete and a young man- this time the "victim" was apparently climbing around in a tree, working on something, when he dropped his machete. So far, so good. Whether by accident or on purpose, I don't know, but he dropped it down to the ground. What happened next, one can only speculate on the how and why of it all, but the results were plain enough: he jumped out of the tree, landing on his tool and thus gashing his foot open.

 

A pretty slice, don't you think?

Thankfully it wasn't too deep- mostly through the callus and only a little into the muscle layers.

The cut had dirt in it, so they had to take time to painstakingly remove it, bit by bit.

Hopefully next time he'll look before he leaps.

Finishing the sterilization process. 

Breanna prepped the lidocain for injection.

Lidocain is a local anesthetic used to numb the wound before stitching.

The first two stitches are in...

Now for the rest!

A total of 16 stitches; through all that callus!

Once they were all in, it was wrapped up and he was sent home!

***

After cleaning up the mess, we returned to our "relaxing" 

evening for about a half hour, then went to bed :)

This is life in Haiti, when you have a medical clinic... :)

A lady taken out to town...

A lady came into the clinic the other day with severe pain in her stomach. 

We were not able to definitively diagnose her condition, so she was taken out to the hospital in town. 

We think it might have been some sort of abdominal infection.

Thankfully Grandpa was planning on going out that day anyway, so we sent her with him.

The patient, walking out to the machine. 

We placed her in the front with Grandpa, where she could ride in more comfort than just in the back. 

 Her caretaker (in the red, white and blue stripped shirt) rode along too.

Before they left Michael prayed for their trip and her recovery.

Here's an earful...

As I walked into the clinic today I was called into Michael's exam room for an interesting look at something...

When I entered, Michael was bent over a lady's ear, peering inside with his otoscope. I asked what the problem with her was and he motioned to some gauze sitting on his table. I shuddered as I looked at the objects scattered upon it- they were the body pieces of a good sized roach! 

The pieces of the insect...

He continued to dig around, cleaning out more and more antenna, legs and chunks of bug.

After a long time of cleaning, washing and more picking around it was all out!

The last thing to do was wash it out with peroxide; this cleaned off the residual remains of the lady's own home remedy she tried to use before coming to the clinic...

Urine.