Just another day in Haiti

I want to make it clear, Haiti and what I've gone through so far is nothing compared to what the Haitians have had to go through in recent years. It's nothing compared to what my brother and father have gone through in their previous trips to Haiti. There have been some great moments, but there have also been moments like what you will soon read about. I choose to write about it because it is important for people to know what goes on here and just how bad the situation is here. I am not here to brag about my experiences and I am not writing to impress anyone with my stories. I write to relieve my stress and to show you a part of the world that you may otherwise not see. If you choose to read it, that's great. If not, that's fine also. So without further ado, here is my story.


I want to give you a warning before you continue reading. From this point on there's no good news. No uplifting stories. And no pretty little message that wraps up this post with a nice smile on your face. No. There's nothing uplifting here. If you are queasy or feint of heart, I would recommend stopping here. Otherwise...welcome to my hell for the next week.
As I walk out to my 6AM shift, my second shift here in Haiti, the first thing I notice is the heat. The sun hadn't risen yet I was still sweating as soon as I walked out of my room. As I go on shift, I hope that since it's Sunday, it will be a nice, quiet day which for the first half I was right. The morning started off easy enough with a couple patients with cuts and aches. Then nothing. For hours. For hours we had no patients, no screaming, no anything. It was quiet. Too quiet. As I sat up on the roof with my dad and asked him questions about what I saw the previous day I make the mistake of mentioning that I have yet to see the hell that he's spoken so much about. Big mistake. Because somewhere up above, someone decided it was time for Haiti to rear its ugly face at me and the hospital. 
I was in triage when it began. I was holding the hand of a scared little boy who was getting a cut on his leg sewn up when one of the Haitian EMTs ran up to the triage and tells me "Dr. Sam needs your help. It's an emergency." Now when I say he ran, I legitimately mean he ran. That is never a good sign. I could tell right away something serious was happening. Not wanting to leave the little boy alone, I told the Haitian EMT to come over here and hold his hand. Once the little boy was off my hands, I quickly rushed over to the Emergency Room where I saw exactly what I was hoping not to see. It was the sight of compressions being done that first caught my eye. A CPR patient. Putting all my emotions aside, I ran over and quickly took over doing compression for the exhausted nurse. As I did compressions, I tried to figure out what was going on and where we were in the CPR process. I had gotten there pretty quick so I didn't miss too much CPR.
After a couple minutes, more people showed up and I switched out compressions with my brother. As I took over BVMing (Bag, Valve, Mask. Basically the way we breathe for a CPR patient) our patient, it was clear there the Bag was not working. The bag, which pushes air into the patients airway was not refilling properly. Now for those of you who have never done CPR, it's extremely stressful even if everything goes right. When something goes wrong during CPR, it gets bad. It becomes chaos. There were people left and right telling me different things while the Haitian EMT frantically searched for another bag. After a few minutes he found one and we switched bags. Unfortunately, the bag didn't particularly matter. We could not get his airway open due to the copious amounts of throw up that was coming out every time his chest was compressed. It was practically useless. After a good 10-20 minutes, we called it. There was nothing more we could do. We ceased CPR and it was immediately on to the next patient. As the Haitian EMT and I began suturing our new patient, the news was broken to the wife about her husband who had just died. Outside the triage where I was, she began screaming. She fell to the ground in disbelief and began rolling on the ground, screaming and crying. We knew. No words were needing to describe the grief she was going through. I just stood there, resisting the urge to cry and trying to stay professional. This woman had just lost her husband. A man only in his late 20's. Gone. She continued to roll on the ground, so much that it became dangerous for her. The Haitian EMT and I grabbed a C-collar and as he held her as still as possible, I quickly applied the C-collar to her. I could see the pain in her eyes. The disbelief. The anger. But most of all, the sadness. We grabbed the pad off a stretcher and attempted as best we could to move her onto the pad so that she didn't hurt herself anymore. We finally got her onto a bench where she continued to cry and scream, but thankfully she had stopped rolling on the ground. It was after that I decided I needed a little break. But as I walked through the ER on the way to my room, the Haitian translator told me he needed my help.
I didn't want to say no to helping. After all, that is what I came here for. But what I was helping with, I was not prepared for. Our task: move the CPR patient's body to the "morgue". "Simple enough", I thought. We covered the body in a sheet, his feet tied to each other sticking out of the sheet. It looked like a prop from any medical show you may watch. We wheeled him out of the ER and down the ramp, the eyes of the Haitian families glued to us, wondering what had happened. Many of them feeling the pain themselves of their loved ones that had passed away in recent years. We wheeled the body passed them and quickly turned as to avoid the grieving wife. We took the body down to the end of the complex and put him next to an outhouse. That was it. That was the morgue. Outside of an unused building at the end of the complex. We just left him there. But as I turned around to go back, the Haitian translator and I both spotted something. Something sitting on top of a garbage can. It looked to be about the length of my arm. One more warning. This is the point where you may want to stop reading. I promise you, you get the point from the first half of the story. From here on is not necessary for you to read but I'm going to continue because it is important for people to know the hell that we see here.

Sam (the Haitian translator) and I walked over to this object. I think in the back of my mind I knew what it was the whole time, I just didn't want to believe it. Sam, on the other hand knew what it was the whole time but had to double check. So he grabbed this bundle of blankets and he slowly removed the top of the blanket as we cautiously peered in. I saw what I knew I was going to see, but was in no way ready to see it. There's nothing you can do to prepare yourself for that. As we pulled away the blanket, a face appeared. It was the face of a baby. The cold, lifeless face of a baby, not more than a few months old. Immediately I turned away but I saw it long enough. A baby girl. He moved her closer to the "morgue" and we left. The only words that I was able to form were "It's a tough job sometimes" to which he responded "all the time".

For the time being I put the baby behind me and began helping other patients when suddenly another EMT comes running into the ER, telling everyone we have a patient with gunshot wounds. So I run outside where I see this patient, still conscious, in the back of a car, bleeding everywhere. We quickly get him onto a bed where we take in into the ER. As we cut off his blood-soaked clothes, he tells us he was shot twice. Once in the neck and once in the butt. We rip off the clothes which reveal two bullet holes, bleeding a significant amount. We quickly get his vitals and get pressure on the wounds. After 15 minutes of stabilizing him, I take him to get X-rayed where you could see that one bullet was lodged in his hip while the other one was in his right cheek. Luckily he had stabilized and was not in immediate danger of dying. Unfortunately, I learned today that he was transferred to another hospital after realizing that he would not be able to afford our hospital, the CT scan, or even a possible life-saving surgery. After an hour of caring for him, we were done. It was 4 P.M. and I was supposed to have been done two hours ago. But in Haiti, nothing ever goes as planned. I went back to my bed and collapsed for a few hours, tired of the hell I had gone through the previous 5 hours.

3 days complete. 5 more shifts to go. This is the hell I chose to come to. This is the hell I want to be in. This is the hell my dad was talking about. I've met some amazing people here so far and learned a ton about medicine...and it's only day 3. I've also seen more gruesome and disgusting things than I care to see, but that's what I signed up for. This is my life for the week. The past shift I had was much better, although we did have another gunshot wound to the neck/face.

I guess if I had to wrap this up nicely with a nice message, it would be to take a second and look around you. Realize just how lucky you are to be living where you are, in good health, and with people you love around you. And cherish those people you love. Go give them a hug and tell them you love them. Because at any moment, just like the wife of the CPR patient, everything you love can be taken from you in an instant. Will have another update soon. Hope this wasn't too disturbing. Goodnight.

Dear Israel, I love you

My most recent blog post is featured on tcjewfolk.com. To view it, please follow this link:http://tcjewfolk.com/dear-israel/

Ever since I first met you when I was 12 I knew there was something between us. It wasn’t until I took a chance on you that I realized how special our relationship truly is. These past nine months of getting to know you have been the most amazing Nine months of my life. Our relationship only grew stronger and stronger as time went on. You have never let me down. Every time I think you can’t get any better, you surprise me with something unique and incredible that makes me fall deeper and deeper in love with you. Over these past nine months you have opened yourself up to me and allowed me to see who you really are. Not the ugly that is portrayed in the media but at the same time not the utopian land many Jews claim to ‘know’ and ‘love’. No. Israel, I know who you really are and while you are not perfect, I love every part of you. - See more at: http://tcjewfolk.com/dear-israel/#sthash.7acbT0bV.dpuf

How To Save A Life — Heroism In Auschwitz

My most recent blog post is featured on tcjewfolk.com. To view it, please follow this link: http://tcjewfolk.com/save-life-heroism-auschwitz/

"With his hand grasped around her arm, he pulled her out of the pit where she was quickly ushered back in line. She didn’t even have time to thank the man who saved her life. She didn’t know what this man looked like and never saw him again. She survived the Holocaust because of one man who risked his life to save a little girl in need of help."

A long overdue update: My life in Israel Part II

Part II

I left off Part I at my 88-hour MADA course so I’ll pick it up from there. Right after my parents left, I headed down to Jerusalem for 4 days of more MADA courses. This time however we were learning new things such as opening a vein (putting in an IV), delivering babies, as well as how to assist an intubation and how to check blood-glucose levels. After watching videos of babies being delivered for 2 hours, we were sufficiently scarred so we moved on to opening veins. With a needle in my hands, a vein within my eyesight, and my extremely unstable, shaking hands, I went at it. Surprisingly enough, I got into the vein on my first try. As my crazy, Russian instructor told me: I’m a “testament that people with shaky hands can be good at opening veins.” After I opened a vein, it was my turn to get one opened on me. For those of you who don’t know, I’m not the biggest fan of needles being stuck into me. In the past I’ve fainted while getting a shot, fainted and threw up while getting blood drawn in Peru (In my defense on that one, I had Typhoid Fever), and almost fainted while I got an IV taken out of me the first MADA class. So I stupidly told my teacher I didn’t like needles and told him that history. Instead of feeling bad for me and letting me off easy, he took a different approach to getting me over my “fear” of needles. He decided that I needed not one, but 4 needles stuck in my arm. I think it’s fair to say my arms were extremely sore the next day. So with my arms immobilized, 3 needles were stuck in my arm and another one in the back of my hand. Surprisingly I took it well. I will admit I was complaining the whole time but other than that, I had no problems. As horrible as that experience was, I think it’s fair to say I got over my dislike of needles. While I never want to have that many needles stuck in me at the same time, I no longer think twice about getting an IV or giving blood.

After passing my Advanced MADA course, I returned to Bat Yam for classes. After a couple of weeks of normalcy, I had what I would call one of the greatest and most terrifying weekends of my life. It all started early that week on one of the last days of January. My roommate Max and I decided that we wanted to go on a hike over the weekend. We decided to go on a hike up north near Mt. Carmel, close to Haifa. Unfortunately our hike was next to a stream and it had been raining continuously for 3 days so we were advised to delay our hike there and go another week. We agreed and decided to go on a hike in the Negev, near the Dead Sea, where it never rains…at least that’s what we thought. As we packed our bags to leave, I checked the weather of a nearby city. The low was in the mid -40s and there was a 0% chance of rain. When we got onto the bus for Arad the weather had changed a little bit. The low was still in the mid-40s but there was instead a 10% chance of rain. Nothing to freak out about. 10% is still a very small chance. After all, we’re going to a desert where it almost never rains. So we continued on our journey. As we rode on the bus, above us was nothing but ominous looking clouds. But once we get to the Negev, those will go away…right? Wrong. As we get off in Arad, we are dumped into the middle of a rainstorm. With nowhere to stay, Shabbat coming in, and nothing but rain overhead, we were in panic mode. We quickly made our way to a mall and right as it was about to close, we went into a sports shop and found a tent. We were saved! At least that’s what we thought. As we walked out of Arad to hike to our starting destination for the next day, the weather seemed to clear up a little. While there was the occasional rain shower, the weather was survivable.
After hiking for hours along the road, we began to approach our campground for the night. Those next 30 minutes, everything we could think of going wrong did. First, the weather dipped down into the 30s. Then it started pouring rain. But luckily for us, we had a tent so it wasn’t a problem. As we began pitching our tent, in the dark, with our frozen, bare hands, one of the poles suddenly snapped. We were stranded in the desert. We had no warm clothes, no place to stay, and we were not very happy. Luckily for us though, we found a nearby Bedouin village and stayed there for the night. While very expensive, it was worth it to have heat and a roof over our head. The next morning we woke up early and began hiking before the sun even came up. About an hour into our hike, we were faced with our first challenge. A flashflood had caused the river that is normally dry to fill with water, moving at a pace more suitable for white water rafting. We were faced with a choice. Do we risk it and cross the river or turn back? After much dilemma, we decided that we had not hiked all this way just to turn back so we went through the river. As I carefully walked through the knee-deep rapids, my heart was racing. I carefully stepped from one rock to the other, making sure I had my footing before I moved. I slowly moved to the other side and once I was on the other bank, I put my shoes and socks onto my frozen feet and continued the walk. About 15 minutes later, we had realized that without a doubt we had made the correct decision. As we approached the peak of the mountain we were climbing we saw what was beyond the mountain. Behind this mountain was a huge canyon. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Other than Machu Picchu, probably the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.
 As we continued to hike, we realized why the internet said it was for “Advanced Hikers Only”. We had to scale down a cliff where one wrong step meant a 100+ foot drop into the canyon. We were also slowed by having to cross more rivers. One area where we were supposed to hike was instead a waterfall. After about 30 minutes of trying to figure something out, we realized our only option was to jump the 15 or so feet down and hope nothing bad happens. Luckily enough for us, we both landed our jumps with a perfect 10 and didn’t get injured at all. We ended up hiking almost non-stop from 6AM until 4PM where we found ourselves at the foot of Masada. We had hiked from Arad to Masada in less than 24 hours. This hike went from being the worst day on Year Course the first day to one of the best on the second day. The hike was worth every bit of pain we went through the first day. While on multiple occasions we were too close to death, we were able to get through the whole hike unscathed. For a day of crossing rapids, scaling down a cliff, bouldering 10 feet over a river, and jumping down from waterfalls, not getting injured was a real feat.

The next month I returned to Bat Yam to continue taking classes and volunteering with MADA. At the beginning of March, my semester ended and I moved into a new apartment in Bat Yam. Tomorrow I head off to Poland for a week, and after that I will be doing only MADA shifts 4-5 times a week until the end of May. More updates to come soon! Sorry they’ve been so sporadic recently.

A long overdue update: My life in Israel Part I

Wow...It’s been awhile since my last post. My apologies to everyone, I will try to be better from now on. For now though, I will try to summarize my past two months in this blog post…A very long blog post. Let’s see, I left off right before I was leaving Jerusalem.

Sunset from the Bat Yam beach

At the beginning of December I left my home in Jerusalem to move to Bat Yam which is a medium-sized city just south of Tel-Aviv. Bat Yam, also known by its nickname “Little Russia” is home to a large population of Russian immigrants. About 30% of the population is Russian. Bat Yam also is home to one of the highest crime rates in Israel. It seems that whenever I tell an Israeli that I live in Bat Yam, I get one of two responses: either “Why?” or “I’m sorry.” With all of that being said, I love living here. Its proximity to the beach- a 20 minute walk away, and to Tel Aviv- a 20 minute bus ride, makes this place the ideal location for me to live. When I want hustle-and-bustle, I can take a bus to Tel Aviv and when I just want to relax and watch the sunset on the beach I can easily walk there. I have been living here for 2 months and I enjoy Bat Yam much more than Jerusalem. I also enjoy living in an apartment a lot more than the campus/dorm feel. As an added bonus, the high here is regularly in the 60s and 70s so that’s always nice. Luckily, Bat Yam has not lived down to its reputation of being a crime-ridden city run by Russian mobsters…yet.

My schedule in Bat Yam is a lot different than in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was mainly education-based while Bat Yam is currently much more volunteer-based. Beginning in March, it will be nearly only volunteering. I am currently volunteering with Magen David Adom (MADA), the Israeli ambulance service. Basically it’s the equivalent to the American Red Cross. Currently I volunteer 3 times a week, with the option of a 4^th night on Thursday. Although I love volunteering, doing 3 overnight shifts in a row while still staying healthy and attending classes is very difficult so normally I only do 3 shifts a week. While I haven’t gotten any interesting calls yet, I know that time will come and I still love riding in the ambulance nonetheless.

Chinese food on Christmas

Now that I’ve updated you all on my current living scenario, let’s go back to the past 2 months. A lot of exciting things have happened since I moved to Bat Yam. We’ll start with an experience I had outside of Israel. Over winter break, 3 of my friends and I decided to take a trip to Vienna, Austria. So on December 22^nd, Aaron, Max, Matt, and I traveled to Austria. We also met up with 2 of our Year Course friends in Vienna. When I first got there, it was exactly how I had imagined it. Black and white. It was winter there so the ground was covered with a thin sheet of snow most of the trip. The train ride from the airport to the hostel was one of immense nothingness. As far as I could see it was dull and bleak. It was like that until we reached the outskirts of Vienna, which injected a bit of life into Austria. While Vienna was not what I would call a “vibrant city” it was definitely entertaining. Since we went around Christmas-time, there were dozens of Christmas markets around the city. It was always entertaining to head to the markets and just walk around there for a bit. We did a lot of walking around the city markets, including the fruit market and the flea market. Based off of some very great advice (thanks Debbie!) we also visited the Schunbrun palace where I was actually able to see first-hand some things I learned about in AP European History way back sophomore year. It was incredibly beautiful and nice to actually use some of my knowledge that I learned in that class. We also went to the Vienna Zoo, the oldest zoo in the world, which brought out the inner-child in us. Other than that, we visited a couple museums, including the Jewish and Holocaust museum in Austria, ate the local cuisine, saw the nightlife, and of course ate Chinese food on Christmas. Aaron and I also had a rather adventurous trip to Venice, Italy. A trip that went from a great trip to hell in the course of 5 minutes. All because of 1 train.

Aaron and I decided to go to Venice one day while we were in Vienna. So after much effort, we finally booked train tickets to Venice. We went on our way, failing to realize that our return train was actually booked for the 27^th at 1:00AM not the 28^th at 1:00AM. So we went there, saw the sights, had a great time and actually ran into a friend from Young Judaea who was also visiting Venice with his family. We ended up hanging out with them most of the night. It was a great trip and we were able to see much of this unique city in the 1 day we were here. As we went back to the train station, only when we looked at the departing trains did we realize our mistake. After getting over the initial panic and shock of missing our train, we decided we needed internet access so we could find another train. If all else failed, we had planned to just get a hotel for a night and go back the next afternoon. After failing to find wireless internet, we finally found a gentleman who saved the trip from being a total train-wreck (pun intended). He let us use the hotel desks computer where we were able to find a train, departing from a station about 25 minutes away…in 23 minutes. So we decided to give it a try. We sprinted through the streets of Vienna to the one road they have, where we found a taxi and we told him to step on the gas. It took us about 10 minutes to make a journey that should have taken 20 minutes. It also cost us 30 euros when it should have cost us 15 but we weren’t about to argue with him. Eventually we found the train and with about 5 minutes to spare, got on the train and made our way back to Vienna, thankful to that man who let us use the computer and completely exhausted; emotionally and physically.

After returning to Vienna, 2 days later we returned to Israel, where I was met by some great news of the Vikings making the playoffs. While that was exciting news, I was more excited to see my brother who was in Israel. The next afternoon, I made my way down to Jaffa where I saw him for the first time since September. (And yes, he still looked as ugly as I remember him.) In a reunion that was fit for the big screen, we both saw each other at the same time, got up, ran in slow-motion to each other and, with tears flowing down both of our cheeks, we embraced for the first time in 4 months. In between sobs of happiness we expressed how much we missed and loved each other. It was like a scene out of a really bad chick-flick. (For all of you who don’t know my relationship with my brother, this is what actually happened…. I saw him sitting at the restaurant, went over, said hi to him and Marissa, and started eating his food. I personally like the other story better.) Anyway, after spending a couple hours with him, I got tired of him and went home. The next day though I traveled to the airport to pick up my parents. After waiting for them for an hour and seeing other families happily reunited, it was my turn. To be honest, when I first saw them I had to do a double-take to make sure that was them. Luckily I wasn’t running up to some random couple, passing the sign that clearly stated “do not cross this point”, and hugging them, they were actually my parents. It was great to see them. I never realized how much I missed free laundry, free food, and overprotective rules. All jokes aside though, I did really miss my family. I never really realized how much until I went half-way around the world alone. It was amazing to see them and spend time with them. They hosted a great Shabbat dinner for a couple of my friends, my cousin Nomi, and I. It was great to be together as a family again. We went out to dinner almost every night and I have to admit, I was quite happy when their flight got cancelled and they had to stay an extra day. But eventually my mom decided she loved her pet squirrels more than me and decided to leave me to fend for myself for another 5 months. (By the way, off-topic but I’M STILL MAD YOU DIDN’T BRING ME CHIPOTLE. If anyone wants to send me some Chipotle, that would be greatly appreciated.) Back to the topic, after they left, a few days later I had to travel to Jerusalem to take the advanced 88-hour MADA course so I could learn how to put in IVs and deliver babies (both turned out to be extremely scarring experiences.)

 I’m splitting this post into 2 different parts so it’s shorter. I’ll end Part I here and post Part II in the upcoming days.