My Work In Haiti
Aid To Haiti Haiti Team #4 Braves Fire to Care for Haitian Patients posted by USC, LAC Haiti Medical
Haiti Medical Aid Team #4 members Julie Gravlin P.A.-C., Pediatrics; Olga Arevalo R.N., ICU; Nicolas Forget M.D., ER/International ER Fellow; Genevieve Santillanes M.D., Pediatrics/ER; Jack Berger M.D., Anesthesia, and Thomas Vangsness, M.D., Orthopedics
Below is a report from the USC/LA County Medical Aid Team Number Four. A new team is scheduled to travel to Haiti Friday, May 21.
The team arrived Sunday, May 2 at the Project Medishare Hospital and the emergency physicians were quickly called to action as sick trauma patients demanded attention. The rest of the team busied themselves assuming charge of their respective services.
The first night was epic as we were all awakened by calls of a fire in the patient tents. We scrambled to evacuate them out of their tent through the smoke. With the help of the U.S. Army, the patients were squeezed back into a single tent before daybreak. The hospital was closed for the next day, as the damage was assessed and repairs were made.
Starting Tuesday, the ED was back in action. The team saw 65 to 80 registered patients every day in addition to some 40 or so patients seen under the mango tree in triage.
Julie Gravlin was busy with about 40 pediatric inpatients. 25% were children with burns sustained in tents while families were cooking. Another 25% had orthopedic problems as a result of trauma during the earthquake. Some required amputations. 25% still suffered from malnutrition while the remaining patients were kids who required surgeries to cure general pediatric problems or had complicated infectious diseases such as pneumonia, malaria, typhoid or encephalitis.
Genevieve Santillanes’ experience was marked by a three-year-old boy whose mother had taken him to multiple hospitals over a two-year period. He had failure to thrive, chronic abdominal pain and recurrent urinary tract infections. On our ultrasound, the patient had bilateral hydronephrosis and a large bladder stone. The Project Medishare staff was able to arrange for a Haitian urologist to come to the hospital and the patient had surgery to remove the obstructing stone the next morning.
Meanwhile, in the OR, Jack Berger managed critical patients undergoing surgery in a tent with no air conditioning. He also assisted the wound care clinic with his expertise in regional blocks. He was humbled by the experience: …“of course it was very moving the dignity with which the Haitian people bore their suffering and how grateful they were for what we were doing.”
Olga Arevalo was part of a small group of dedicated nurses who had the difficult task of staffing the adult ICU. The patients were in critical condition yet the equipment and the working conditions were substandard. Drugs, blood, and materials were in short supply but good will and dedication abounded. Olga summarizes her impressions: “This medical mission was for me a dream come true and I would love to go again. I met many good people and was inspired by the spirit of Haitian patients and volunteers…”.
Last but not least Tom Vangsness put his unbounded energy to good use by caring for the many orthopedic patients at the hospital. Somehow, he always found the time to help in the triage area in the morning. In and around work he could be counted to make us laugh, however dire the situation was.
All members of the team are thankful for the opportunity that USC offered us and we feel we made the most of it. We are all willing to return if we are needed.
Our team traveled to Haiti to provide surgical & medical assistance after the January 12 earthquake.
Correspondances About Haiti
Corespondences between Harvey W. Austin, Jack Berger and Haiti Team #4-May 11, 2010
Hi Haiti #4 Team,
Congratulations on a job well done! I hope that the experience was as rewarding for you as it was for me.
Please forward me a short narrative of your experience there and the number of cases that you cared for during your time there. Include anything that was interesting, or touched you.
Thank you again for your service!
Best,
Lydia
Chaos-Dancer
Hi, everyone, This is probably the last I will write as I feel complete.
I have shared the idea of our being 'chaos-dancers' with some of you... and this is piece is the result of our discussions. I put it on the blog, www.plasticsurgeonsdiary.com., a blog for the plastic surgeons who have gone to and are scheduled for deployment.
The descriptions and keen observations by Drs Fong and Dr. Thimappa continue to hold true.
For me, the week of May 1-8 was challenging, extraordinary and not to be forgotten. I am a bigger person out of
having been there.
I was impressed by the extraordinary quality of the entire team. Each of our 100+ member team was so dedicated, so compassionate, so open to new ideas and so willing to do whatever was in front of them that I am led to believe this: That each team member, at either a conscious or a sub conscious level, had self-selected themselves to dance with the chaos that is threatening to arrive on a world level. And each arrived to use Haiti as a "self-training ground for chaos-dancers".
Though chaos is disorderly disorder, such is not quite true for Haiti, rather more an orderly disorder - but sufficient as training ground. A chaos-dancer needs to A. see a situation as it is rather than as we wish it to be or as it ought to be. B. look at what is wanted and needed at any given moment - and produce it. And that's what our team did – both individually and collectively.
Every single day there were opportunities to fulfill these two aspects. If each of us, (plastic surgeons included) simply asked... 'How can I best serve at this moment'... opportunities abound. To hold a frightened patient in your arms, to pass out water to the thirsty waiting to be seen, to wash the feet of an old woman whose mud-caked feet would have soiled her bed, to pat a shoulder, to walk with a patient to surgery holding their hand....
Sometimes, as for the two days when our OR was closed after an electrical fire fried all the wiring there was little for me to do but these, these small things that point to our shared humanity. And these things were sufficient.
None of us need worry if we were sufficient. We brought ourselves...
and that ... all by itself... was sufficient. - Harvey W. Austin MD
From Jack to Harvey
Harvey, it was a pleasure and a privilege working with you. - Jack
From Harvey to Jack
And that goes double for me, Jack. When I first saw you, it was, "The guy wears overshoes. Overshoes?!!!" But... wow, when we spoke. Now HERE is a man who thinks outside the box... Jack, I wish we could have sat for many evenings over a cold one and just, you know, mused, ruminated old thoughts and solved the world's problems. Maybe someday... - Harvey
From Jack to Lydia
Lydia, as I mentioned previously, this was an experience that I will never forget and hope to return again, possibly in the fall as a volunteer. I performed 26 anesthetics under the most adverse conditions. The most difficult was a 6 month old baby with intussusception and would have died without the emergency surgery at 10 o'clock at night. The fire in the late evening and the need to evacuate all the patients to the outdoors was frightening. I was able to perform several regional anesthetics without the need for general anesthesia, one being a hand block on a 9 year old child without any sedation and who was cooperative for the entire procedure. The haunting melodies of the creole gospel singing of the patients still rings in my memory. The suffering of the burned children was the most emotional. - Jack
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