1st person perspective from Haiti
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- 10g0
Sorry to be a downer on Monday but I think it's a shame the American media has laregly stopped their media coverage. As a designer I have contributed my skills to creating a lot of posters for benefit relief parties and events, which is something I guess.
Needless to say a family member of mine just got back from there on Sunday and this is what they had to say:
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HAITI
Feb. 1-15-10Our DMAT, MA-2(Disaster Medical Assistance Team, Massachusetts 2) team was listed to be on backfill for the month of February. When the earthquake occurred on Jan. 12 we had a pretty good idea that we would be used to fill other teams from across the country. After several days of scrambling to get the things we needed, specifically like hard hats and mosquito netting, in addition to our usual gear which we always keep ready and packed, we were notified that about 26 of us would be going to Haiti. At the last minute 6 people were cut from the list from national headquarters-why we don’t know. Unfortunately, Robin was not picked to go because they needed general surgeons, ER docs and orthopedic surgeons. We were very disappointed because he was looking forward to being of help and was greatly missed by the team.
Feb. 1, we went on active duty at 8 AM and later that afternoon were told to be at Logan for a 7 PM flight to Dulles. When we arrived there we were given shared hotel accommodations and the next day were briefed about what to expect in Haiti by NDMS (National Disaster Medical Service) which is under HHS.
We were all part of a team called IMSURT-S, which stands for International Medical (or mobile) Surgical Response Team-South. There are IMSURTS east and west also. East had already been there. There were about 60 of us from all over the country: MA, FL, WA, OR, TX, PA, TN.CA, CO. They included Nurses, MD’s NP’s PA’s, paramedics, logistic and planning personnel and administrative people.
For those who had not been immunized previously (out team had) there were shots to be had. We spent the night at the same hotel, only to get up at 2 AM, loaded on a bus at 3 AM, taken to Dulles and sat on the bus for 2 hours waiting for the pilot to show up for the charter plane to Haiti. We finally lifted off at 8 AM!
Arriving in Haiti about 11:30 AM we were loaded onto the back of a large open truck with metal rails like a herd of cattle and trucked through the streets of Port au Prince to our tent hospital at GHESKIO clinic. This is an acronym in French that stands for Haitian Group for the study of Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections.
On our way through the streets which was about a 40 minute ride over rough terrain and pot holed streets we saw the devastation of the quake. There were tons of rubble, mostly cement blocks, mortar, rubbish, trash everywhere and thousands of people just milling about trying to scavage something from the wreckage that they could use. The only shelters were sheets or cloth held up by sticks or poles and bare ground for their miniscule spaces they now had to live in. So many people had no shoes and only the clothes on their backs. One lady asked us for some shoes as we slowed at an intersection but we only had our boots on and would have caused a riot if we tried to hand out something to one person.
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Some of the larger buildings that were not totally demolished were partially collapsed and in danger of falling more which they did with some of the aftershocks. We did experience 3 aftershocks while we were there. The first 2 were only a few seconds each and we could feel the ground tremble. The last one was a little more frightening and lasted longer with chairs moving, tables moving water shaking in the containers, etc. We had to meet at a rally point to see that we were all accounted for and then went back to our patients.We went by schools and churches that had collapsed and all were lost in them. A large nursing school lost all of the students. Five of the medical staff at the GHESKIO clinic were killed as well in the quake. All the Haitians lost 1 or several members of their family. One woman came to our clinic several times with an infant she had found after the quake and was taking care of it. One of the mothers who was in labor was asked
if she had other children. She cried and told us that her other baby had been killed in the quake.On arrival at the Clinic we were greeted by the team who had been there for 2 weeks before us and were anxious to turn their duties over to us. We spent the first night together and space was limited trying to find room for 120 people to sleep but they left the next day and we took over.
We had 2 large tents to sleep in, probably 20+ people on cots in each tent and several people slept on the porch of the clinic buildings with mosquito netting.
There were 2 toilets: 1 for men and 1 for women. The toilets did not flush unless you filled the tank with waste water, only when it was necessary to flush. No toilet paper could be put into the toilet but in a waste basket. Rats were around, especially at night and I always checked out the bathroom before closing the door to make sure they were not there. A deplorable condition.The showers were similar. There were 2 cold tent showers. There was standing water in the bottom that never drained. There was no place to hang your dry clothes and several times I dropped my dry clothes in the water. Another deplorable condition. I always wore my water shoes in the shower but I don’t think it mattered.
The hospital consisted of more large tents: Operating room, Rcovery room, ICU, Pharmacy, Pediatrics, Major and Minor tents, and Wound care tent. The Triage area was out by the locked gate to the clinic. We had the 82nd Airborne stationed with us to protect us from the crowds and keep order and protect us form the violence that went on especially at night when there would be gunshots between gangs. There was a huge tent city right outside our hospital. Every night they sang. A rooster woke us up every AM starting about 3-4. It reminded me of my childhood so I did not mind but others did.
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In my tent, the Major tent, we had total of 8 cots and 2 for Labor and Delivery. We had 3 patients with gunshot wounds most of the 2 weeks we were there. One man ended up having his leg amputated on the last day which I wish we never knew. We had tried so hard to save his leg but the muscle was dead and he would have gangrene.
He was devastated because he said in his country a man is worth nothing without all his limbs. He had 4 children and his wife was pregnant. He had been a store owner and had been shot by robbers. We constantly had to keep his bandage covered with plastic to prevent the flies from feasting on the blood soaked bandage.Other patients we had in our tent were pregnant mothers. We had about 10 babies born and 3 emergency C-Sections. Thank God there was an OB doc and nurse to take care of that. But I took care of the babies and mothers afterward. They usually went “home” to the ground that same day or the next. We took cardboard boxes that supplies came in and padded them and put foil sheets in them and a baby blanket and that was the babies’s bed. We put the box on a chair next to the mother’s cot. We put a sign on the box that said “Baby in Box, Do Not Discard”.
There were many cases of dehydration, starvation, crush injuries, fractures, wounds, TB, HIV, AIDS, malaria. Families would bring pots of food to their patients in the hospital. For those who did not have anyone to bring them food, I would give them some MRE’s (meals ready to eat that the soldiers eat) and water from our stock. We ate nothing but bottled water and MRE’s for 2 weeks. Families came in to bathe their family members as best they could.
The one nice thing was a safety officer from MASS General made a large pot of Haitian coffee with bottled water every morning for morning report. It was one of the few nice things we had to look forward to.
Our days were 12 hour+ days or nights from 7-7. Luckily I was on the day shift. It was difficult for the night shift to sleep during the day because the tents were so hot and it was noisy. Temps were probably in the 90-100 degree range every day but we never saw a thermometer. We only had 1 hour of pouring rain one morning at 5 AM but since we left they have had more rain and for longer periods. Mosquitoes were everywhere. We applied DEET at least twice a day and then some. At dusk there were swarms of mosquitoes that would come in to the hospital tents. The poor Haitians had no DEET and that is why there is so many with malaria.
We have to take anti-malaria meds every week starting 2 weeks before we left and 4-6 weeks after we come home. It is kind of upsetting to our stomachs but we know we need to do it. I am sure we will all convert to positive TB tests which we need to have in another 4 weeks. That will mean more meds for months more.
The field hospital hired local Haitians to work as cleaning people to empty the slop buckets, and mop and sweep the tents, etc.
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We also hired them as interpreters as everyone spoke Creole. The interpreters were school teachers, attorneys, etc who had no jobs because there were no schools or courts or anything.Sean Penn was in Haiti and doing a lot of good work. He sent us a patient to be evaluated one day from his clinic and came into my tent and spoke to me about her. He also gave us a portable x-ray machine so we could take our own x-rays. He also supplied other things for us which I am not sure what they were but he never wanted any publicity about it and was driven to do all he could for the Haitians.
Former President Clinton came one day to see our hospital. I think the next day he had 2 stents put in his heart in NYC. He talked to a large group but I just glanced at him from my tent. There was a Congressional Delegation that came through one day who were on some committee to vote on how much to appropriate for USAID which was in charge of the US response. Hopefully they saw good things and were impressed.
The Haitians were and are very stoic people. Their suffering is so great that we cannot even imagine what they are going through. It is really unbelievable to try to describe what they are dealing with without seeing it.
There are tent cities that house as many as 20,000 people in fields with just sheets or pieces of cardboard over them. They burn tires or rubbish at night to keep warm and get rid of the waste. I did see one long line of 2 city blocks of people waiting for food or water. They have had to give out daily ration tickets to women only because the men were taking all the food and water.—The survival of the fittest.
Ordinarily 50% of Haitian babies die before age 5. Now with the earthquake, it will be much worse. We saw so may cases of anemia and malnutrition in children. The average life expectancy is age 50 and these people look like they are 80. There are supposed to be 10,000 babies born in February in Haiti. Most of them are born at home and never see a doctor. There is a big push on for children to get vaccinated at the clinic now.
On the Sunday that we were there a pastor gave a religious service in the center of our compound. He read some psalms and played the accordion and we prayed the Our Father.
He also would gather at the end of the cleaning ladies work day and they would sing the most beautiful songs in Creole among the hospital tents, accompanied by his musical talent. I wish we had recordings of those sessions. It was unbelievably beautiful, inspiring and uplifting. To see them be able to sing in spite of what has happened to them was an awakening to us.The Haitians are very religious and spiritual. They pray a lot with their arms outstretched and break out into song. They were very grateful for our care. One old man prayed so hard that the Americans would take him because we had taken such good care of him. It
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broke my heart when I had to tell him that he was ready to be discharged. He resigned and said hopelessly “well I will just die then”. He was alone, had no place to go and was
not strong enough to stand in long lines for food and water and had no family. His memory haunts me....We had a little 17 month old baby boy who had TB meningitis which is an inflammation of the covering of the brain. His mother had been non compliant with TB meds previously and now he was brain damaged, blind, could not feed normally and exhibited abnormal posturing- a sign of his brain damage. He had an NG tube for feeding (through his nose to his stomach) and we fed him every 3 hours as well as his meds. They wanted to send him out with his mother but at the last minute, found a pediatric hospital, St
Damien’s, to transfer him to. I was fortunate to be able to go with him and his mother, a Haitian doctor and 2 of our colleagues in a van on the 1 hour trip from our field hospital.St. Damien’s is a beautiful white, 2 story quadrangle hospital on the outskirts of Port au Prince (I think, at least it was 1 hour east from where we were located). It had an ER which was full of sick babies, in- patient unit, an oncology unit, an OR etc. You can look it up on Google and see and read about it. We left our little baby there with his mother. God knows how long they kept him or how long he will live. In our country he would live a long time with good care but not recover
The ride to and from St. Damien’s was such a shock. We could see for miles and miles the devastation, the crowds, the tent cities, a few skinny dogs running around, some pigs and goats and chickens all scavaging for food not to mention the people. There were those picking through ruins for anything they could use: a bed spring, some pieces of wood to burn or make a tent frame. They had to guard their meager belongings from one another. Women and children carried large things on their heads, even buckets of dirty water.
Some of my colleagues had cell phones with international plans and the technology to be able to call home but I did not. However I was fortunate to be able to use their phones or the Satellite phone from the hospital to call Robin occasionally. Our days were so busy. Morning report was at 6:45 for everyone. Breakfast had to be taken before that. There was a large outdoor round table and seats around 2 large trees in the middle of the compound where we sat to eat in shifts right outside our tents. We worked until 7 PM and by then it was dark so we all had headlamps to find our way back to the tents. We usually tried to get in line for the cold, deplorable shower, tried to grab something to eat that we could pick from the MRE’s and then fall into bed to wake up the next AM and start all over again.
A lot of our staff got sick and started dropping like flies with dehydration and a few with dysentery. Both pharmacists were down at the same time and the Pharmacy had to be manned by an Anesthetist and ICU nurse for a few days. Luckily I was not one of them. I drank lots of water, even putting packets of salt into it to replenish what we were losing.
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You could see these white lines on our blue shirts that was the salt we were losing in our perspiration. The US Embassy sent us cases of pedialyte and we drank that frequently.
We had some outdoor sinks throughout our compound and I frequently went out and scrubbed my hands with soap and water as well as using the alcohol hand cleaner in our tents and wearing gloves. Thank God we had plenty of gloves and masks.
We did have sick bay for our colleagues and by the 2nd week there was almost always 1-2 people there with iv’s for hydration, etc.At the end of our stay we were relieved by another group similar to ours and after a 2 hour orientation our team was transferred by buses this time, (not cattle trucks), maybe
because it was dark by then, to the US Embassy Grounds in Port au Prince. We still stayed in tents and on cots and ate MRE’s that night but the next day found a café that had real food and delicious croissants among other things. There was a beautiful lap swimming pool which we were not allowed to use but some people stuck their tired feet in it anyway. There were flush toilets and hot showers that we could walk to and it was such a luxury. We could also get cold soft drinks, something we had dreamed about. At 8AM that Sunday we saw a sign that said a religious service would be held at the flagpole so some of us went to it. It was outdoors and attended mainly by military and a few of us. It was conducted a military Religious person which is a special rank. He gave a very moving ceremony of Christ’s forgiveness, no matter what our sins are which was appropriate to the readings of the day. There were hymns, Apostle’s Creed, The Our Father and more readings. Two of our people had tears in their eyes after hearing the sermon- a message they had not heard in a long time for different reasons.Later that day we were taken to the airport and boarded the plane that had brought some of our replacements, getting to say a quick hello to them in passing. Their mission would be a little different from ours in that the clinic would go to a 12 hour day instead of 24 and eventually hand over to NGO’s (non government organizations) to continue the work of trying to help the Haitian people.
Our trip to the US stopped in Miami so we could get off the plane and go through Customs, Miami being the nearest port of entry from Haiti. We then flew to Atlanta because of all the snow at Dulles. We were greeted by HHS/NDMS people who surprised us by giving us all our own rooms!! We were so elated. It was like being in a palace with our own bathroom, a hot bath and shower, fluffy beds with beautiful white sheets and fluffy pillows and American food!!! We were in heaven.
After a wonderful night’s sleep we had a 9 AM debriefing meeting and by 11 AM were on our way back to the airport for our flight to Boston and then bus ride to Worcester. We arrived to a parking lot full of family and friends to welcome us home. Robin had a Welcome Home banner made and he and Risa were holding it up. We let all the parents off the bus first who had small children. We were all so happy to be home with our loved ones and family and friends. We appreciate our country, our food, our luxuries, our homes, etc so much more now that we have seen how those so less fortunate have compared to us.
7We all feel so honored and privileged to have been able to serve on our mission. It will be
one of the greatest highlights of our lives.
God Bless America!
Kate
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- dMullins0
Thanks?
- discoduro0
Don't you have a diary for this?
- 10g00
You guys are shitheads
- I'm just saying. There's gotta be a better place for this to live.dMullins
- You already knew this
http://www.qbn.com/t…Jimbo82
- brandelec0
puts things in perspective...thanks for sharing
any photos?
- 10g00
Thanks for listening brandelec. It's s shame the media has stopped covering this. No pics right now.
I would appreciate if people stop criticizing this post, I put it here because this is a forum regarding communication design and it's in regards to a global humanitarian effort. If you don't like it, don't read it, but there's no need to lambast someone's perspective.
- GeorgesII0
this is awful,
It's crazy to come back to the 1st world after that,
this is why first aid workers suffers from ptsd's
-
I believe nobody forgot about Haiti, it's just that Tiger wood apologise so we can go back to more serious matter
</sarcasm>
- bitPic0
I like it how nature thinks I'm gonna help clean up her mess...
don't get me wrong i feel bad for those people but I wouldn't raise one finger up for something "God/Nature" could have prevented.
- persona_non_grata0
Media and Celebrities milked it for all it was worth. People are tired of hearing about it.
I understand what your aiming at, but we've given our millions - unless there news coverage would cause people to volunteer to go down their - whats really the point?
Bad stuff is happening around the world everyday - and thats the big boy perspective ... may be hard to handle but we have people starving in America - Portugal just had a disaster of some consequence give some other people the chance- first its not portugal but maijorca, calabria had a landslide here too, but we have all the infrastructure to take care of it, they don'tGeorgesII
- CNN calls it Portugal - http://edition.cnn.c…persona_non_grata
- me personally i could care less where it was. I feel for the people's losspersona_non_grata
- sorry g. but >> http://en.wikipedia.…akrokdesign
- sorry bro . but >>> http://en.wikipedia.…persona_non_grata
- duckofrubber0
Such cynics here. Thanks for the first-hand story. I read it.
- harlequino0
This makes all my bullshit problems seem like even more trivial bullshit. Thanks for the report.
- 10g00
thank you people, I know we goof off on this but I thought I'd share since we live in such a superficial mediascape
- akrokdesign0
american media = lazy media stuffed with extra cheese.