Pages From My Journal: Haiti, Day 10

6 March 2010

Today was supposed to be a half day at the clinic because it was Saturday. Ironically it was quite busy for a while. Actually, it started raining this morning and as it was cloudy, we assumed there wouldn't be many patients for a good amount of time. There were a few here and there, but mostly it was slow until a group meeting came together right by the clinic. THEN ever so slightly people sneaked up to register (and they were all meeting attendees!). It got to be quite late and we realized we had seen the majority of the people at the meeting - this was kind of ridiculous to me. I felt like many of the reasons people were coming over was because it was a novelty and they wanted to know what was going on. So, I was quite busy at my vital sign station and I've gotten pretty good at some basic Creole. My translator was pretty absent today - in fact, he left several times and came back high as a kite. Crazy!

Julia's patient from yesterday came back (the guy with the calf wound) and said it felt a lot better and it even looked slightly better. There was another pretty major wound that we saw today - a man was fishing and cut the top of his foot on aluminum roofing. The wound he had for 15 days was yellow (from antibiotic powder placed directly on it - if only it worked that way... it should have been reconstituted and injected!). It was pretty nasty to look at. Julia dressed it and packed it with a wet to dry dressing and wrapped his foot in a plastic bag to hopefully keep it clean and dry on his way home. He hopped into his boat and rowed home.

There were more fishermen today, but I missed most of their fishing because I was so busy with my vital sign station. I saw my second highest temperature today - 39.5 Celsius (103 Farenheidt) in a 5 year old boy. He looked really sick, but I was able to get a small smile out of him. He got a shot by the other RNs today - 5 ml in his butt (not sure about that amount...)

I'm really tired today and not sure why. We felt another small aftershock this afternoon while we were stocking the med room. It wasn't as heart pounding as yesterdays, but I still don't like the feeling and can't imagine what the people here think about every time the earth ripples underneath them. I get jittery when the dogs start to bark. They know what's going on. It's like they can sense it before everyone else.

For the past two days there have been shipments of supplies from Port-au-Prince. Today we started to unpack the boxes and found so many wonderful stashes of medications. Our stock room filled up again and we feel so much better about leaving the clinics with medications for Monday. I took some before and after pictures. Our med table at clinic was pretty bare today. I'm not really looking forward to Port-au-Prince and the ER. I am hoping to be able to work in the medicine tent because the ER is so terribly out of my league, but it will be nice to be extremely busy and hopefully more useful once again.

Lord, be my light and my salvation. Continue to protect us from dangers that are so prevalent around us. Be with Corey's family with the loss of her grandfather today. Would you surround them all with a presence that they can only attribute to you. Thank you for the reconciliations that has occurred with some of her family. Help me to be a support as needed. May our trip to Port-au-Prince be uneventful tomorrow. May be sleep be rested. Amen.