Janean

Bonswa!

We are exhausted after today; we had the busiest outpatient clinic to date. All three of us were running around like chickens with our heads cut off for at least 5 hours straight. It was crazy! We saw stroke patients, car accident patients (no surprise there with the traffic), earthquake victims with fractures, pain, swelling, difficulty walking. I saw a 7 year old boy with a soft tissue injury on his arm; I asked if he was in school and his mother said he is too scared to go back. His old school collapsed in the quake. Kirsten was a great help because we had lots and lots of upper extremity patients today.

Judilene did great today; there was a reporter here from the Miami Herald doing a special story just about her. They took some pictures, and got most of her story from Josianne, the hospital vice president. Heather really worked with her this afternoon on her arm, after she walked with me. Heather recently broke her wrist and is still wearing the splint, so she was able to show Judeline how stiff she was and that she had to work on it to get better. Judeline really focused on what Heather was saying, and Heather had this soft voice and soft touch and Judeline really responded. She moved her fingers and wrist more than I had ever seen to date. Yeah!

Our translators are doing great and learning more all the time. Heather has taught some CEU courses so she has taken it upon herself to teach these guys some PT lingo. Today, she was just grilling them on RICE - rest, ice, compression, elevation. She was also reviewing the bones of the lower extremity and they were just eating it up. They consider this not only a job for them, but a way to continue working in the rehab field for years to come.

We had a sad situation today right by our outpatient clinic. A pickup truck pulled up with a patient lying in the back and a couple of people back there with him, one holding an IV. A doctor came up to me and said that the patient had a high fever, and was probably septic and they needed a surgeon. We showed him the ER entrance, and told him that the surgeon had just left. By the time he got back to the truck (only a minute or two), the man had died. His family stayed in the parking lot, with their dead relative covered with a sheet in the back of a truck and wailed and cried for several hours until finally at the end of the day, an ambulance came to pick him up. It was so sad.

The missions group here, the 410 Bridge, has an idea to start a women's industry by teaching Haitian women to sew burlap coffee bags into a cute little back pack to sell in the US. They needed help with the prototype bag, even though they said the instructions were supposed to be idiot-proof. What do you know but Kirsten owns her own purse-making business and is spending this evening helping them sew the first prototype! She just came back and found that they were getting 3 purses out of each burlap bag, but Kirsten showed them how to get 5 purses out of each bag.(Thank you God for orchestrating that!)

Also, Dr. Bernard mentioned that he was looking for a female translator for his guest house. I talked to Fabian today, who used to translate at the hospital but was recently laid off when most of the teams pulled out. I gave her Dr. Bernard's number, she called him and she has an interview tomorrow! She is so excited, she came up to give me a hug and said she had go home and wash her clothes and get ready for tomorrow. Her mother keeps her two children during the week while Fabian tries to get work to support them. Her mother lives up the mountain, not too far from Dr. Bernard, so she will get to see them more often as well! Yeah God for giving Fabian a job!

That's it for today; can't wait to hop in the shower!

To God be the glory!

Janean

PS. The fried plantain we for dinner last night was delicious!