Jennifer Thoughts...

It is day twelve for me. I feel like this is where I live now. It is routine, in a good way. We feel interested and eager to see what comes our way each morning. I have feelings of not remembering my life at home and the strange priorities I had there. At first when I arrived I was afraid of not knowing how to provide care to my Haitian patients. I had an anxious feeling when Guibson handed me his "intake", and I was left to diagnose and discern how I could help. I so quickly wanted to become comfortable with the structure of things. I was excited when I saw something obvious, like a knee injury with a known healed fracture, versus an unknown, such as a possibly unhealed fracture, or someone with vague pain all over from multiple sources. So now I feel pretty much comfortable with whatever comes along. It took about three or four days to know the storage room, to develop my alternative hand cleaning regimen, and to know how to do patient education with pauses. For Translation. So that. The translators could. Understand what I'm. Explaining to the patient. Without forgetting what. I said.
We say incredible things such as,"I am a shoulder therapist." or "Today I am a pediatric therapist." or "I am a wound care nurse" or "Today I evaluated cranial nerves." (I actually don't know how to do that.)
Today at the end of the day a man appeared in a wheelchair. A hospital worker brought him out to the clinic and said he was waiting for a ride, then he left the man there. The man seemed dazed and he had some sort of a splint and bandage all down one leg. After Alex talked to him we realized the man did not know where he was. Apparently he was hit by a car in Port-au-Prince but instead of being taken to a nearby hospital, the ambulance drove him all the way to our hospital. He was far from home. OK, first things first. Can we get you some crutches. (I know how to do that.) The man was grateful, shocked that we would offer. Inside the hospital they said he couldn't have any. OK, crutches are done. Now, hmmmmm.....he wanted to use my phone. OK, that's easy. Long story short, he made three calls over an hour and a half, finally got a hold of his family who had been worried sick and had not known where he was for 24 hours. After an additional 45 minutes, they arrived to get him. He had to walk, on crutches, about a half mile to catch a tap-tap to get back home. Mary and I so badly wished we could do more. Still, he had a face of eternal gratitude. I took a picture of him crutching away.
At first I felt like I was not making much of a difference, and that I was not doing enough. Then I thought about that well known story about the boy on the beach, who finds a starfish and throws it back in the water to save it. The man approaches and says, "What are you doing? There are millions of them here, you cannot possibly save them all." The boy replies, "I can save this one." It really speaks to those of us who have come here. It is by far the most emotionally difficult thing I have done.
Mary heard from Clifford's mother that they are in need of a tarp. Mary asked Arnold to buy one with her money so he did. He is such a cool dude. It seems like many of us who have come, have that one thing we do that we cannot NOT do. This is Mary's legacy for Clifford. Mine is to get him onto YouTube next week. :) It was really hard yesterday when I took him into the doctor's office, laid him on the table, took out my phone and called Josaine, handed it to the doctor and said, "Talk to each other." Please. Talk to each other about what he needs. It was a risk, because I looked like an idiot. A desperate interfere-er. Eh, who cares. Today he hitched a ride to a children't hospital, that's all I care about. When his little one legged body laid on that table, as the doctor and the administrator talked in Creole for ten minutes...blah blah blah blah...I put my head on his little head and I cried. I tried not to. I told him I loved him.
Judeline is much the same. She is walking farther, showing initiative to come to therapy on her own (we choose our battles with her), but she still will not work her left hand. We put vitamin E oil on it now, my hand chases hers with the little pill capsule until it drizzles on it. Then she gingerly rubs it in with one finger. I tell her she can listen to Brian Libeer's cool music if she will walk, so she is eventually lured into my trap. I gave her mother the number of the LEAP group who will be here doing surgery this weekend. Together we fire that flare into the night sky.
This is the week of referrals. It feels good to have a tentative new prosthetic contact. We sent about eight of our patients names to a new source via e-mail. We hope that works out and that some faceless man will respond.
Mary, Amy and I have decided that if we could combine the compassion, devotion, strength and dedication of the caring Haitian family members with the equipment, environment and technology of our American medical community, we would have a perfect healing utopia. I read about previous teams and their observations of how families watch our care, absorb our techniques in positioning, turning, skin care and the importance of mobility. It is so true. They know nothing else other than
being by their families side, protecting until death.
I knew I would eventually figure out why I was here. I definitely did not know before I came. Some do, I did not at all. I thought it would be more like and a-ha moment, or a light bulb thing. But its more like a maze that takes time to wind through, and you don't know what you've done until you're done. I'm sort of mad because I was homesick for 5 days, then happy for 5 days, now something new is happening and its getting raw and twisty again. Pain of leaving. Grief. Loss. Life. Wishing. Seeing. Smelling. Touching. Tasting the last few days....