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.
