Day #5

I was on-call through the night but it was quiet. The morning started off with two quick normal spontaneous vaginal deliveries. One little boy with a comically proud and happy daddy. One little girl whose mommy was so pleased to get a girl. The only one who wasn’t happy was Rick who said I stole his delivery. The nurse asked me to check the patient because she wanted to push. Rick said, “Nah, she’s only 6 cm. I just checked her.” The baby was crowning before I could get my gloves on, and popped out seconds later. Stole his delivery, huh, the nerve of that guy.

Sad cases…teenage girl with a non-healing right forearm fracture, open wound healing OK, but needs an operation they won’t be able to do here for months. Young man with a nervous breakdown because many of his family were killed and then a brother was shot a couple of days ago. Young boy with a sickle cell crisis…we could fix him. Baby with hydrocephalus, vomiting, decreased level of consciousness, needs a shunt that they can’t do here. UM has a neurosurgeon, but may have to send her out of country. Kid with chickenpox who is now not infectious who was living with her family in our isolation tent. Time to go “home”…thought the tent was theirs to keep but have to go back to their tarp. Etc., etc., etc.

Another group (Sarah, Scott, Alex and Arne) went out to some orphanages with the NYC Medics to do clinics for the kids. One of the “orphanages” was a broken down building with a tarp over it. The other was a lean-to tarp spread along the side of a leaning wall between parked cars. Sarah says “I could quit my job and take care of all 25 of those kids.”

One of Sean Penn’s friends is a gourmet chef who usually cooks for traveling rock bands. Now he is volunteering for us. He went to the Dominican and picked up fresh produce and seafood. He made seafood fettuccine which was excellent. Then we helped unload about 4 tons of rice, water, and Malta. Malta is a local drink of carbonated molasses, not as good as Mountain Dew but more calories for the Haitian people. The rice comes in ten 3 pound sacks bundled together in plastic…much easier to distribute than a 50# sack of rice. Distributed by Global DIRT (Disaster, Immediate Response Team). They work a little off the radar, bypassing some red tape, using dump trucks and unmarked cargo box trucks, and working at night. They try to avoid the big crowds that interfere with distribution in other situations. They travel only at night and try to deliver inside locked compounds.

Howard

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