So Day One of Medical......they were so right when they told us that the people would walk miles to get to the church to be seen and that when we arrive people would be asleep in the church having stayed all night just to have a chance to be seen. There were even people all over outside of the church. We in America complain if we have to sit in a Dr's office for more than one hour and these people have walked miles and slept on floors and church pews to have a "CHANCE" to see a medical person!! We had already set up the pharmacy in one of the orphanage rooms and locked it up the day before so we set tables up under the tent and the interpreters started bringing us each a patient. We had Dr John (who grew up in Haiti) who came to the US and is now a Dr in Chicago (and our new best friend!!!), another nurse from Chicago and myself that have had over 20 years of a vast array of medical experience (so we were instructed to see patients, diagnose and treat as well)....you must understand, in Haiti there is no Dr around the corner so for nurses with many years of experience they are as much a Doctor to the Haitians as the Drs are! Two Haitian Doctors who didn't speak a lot of English...which became comical when they wrote on a piece of paper what they wanted Bill and Mandy to dispense in the pharmacy and I ran in to get meds for my patient and Bill hands me the paper and says what does this say.....hahahhahaha!! I said "its wrote in French" LOL! We got that stopped pretty quick since the pharmacists (my husband and my niece) don't read French! We also had a Gyn. Nurse Practitioner which comes in handy when we were dealing with a lot of STD's! I MEAN A LOT!
The first 30 minutes was a bit nerve wracking even though as a nurse from some big hospitals I knew the treatments for things....I had never known the pressure that put on me to actually diagnose someone and provide medication for them! I had a woman in her early 60's that had very high blood pressure, I had given her some medication to dissolve under her tongue to get her blood pressure down, it was still up after about an hour so I gave her another medication and then laid her on the floor of the church as she had arrived with such a bad headache, something that is not uncommon with high blood pressure. After 30 minutes I rechecked her and her blood pressure had gone down significantly so I put her on some blood pressure medications along with a diuretic and had her come back on Wednesday so I could recheck her!! You don't think you make a difference.....until Wednesday this lady comes up to my interpreter pointing at me saying she wants to see me. He said she was the lady that I had saw on Monday. I couldn't believe how much better she looked that I barely recognized her without the stress on her face from her terrible headache and overall not feeling well just a couple days prior. God is good and sometimes He allows us to see the fruition of our efforts!!
I had a mother bring in her two month old infant and said the baby cried all the time. I put my finger near its cheek and sure enough the baby was trying to find it....which is an indicator that the baby was hungry. I asked her if she was breast feeding and she said yes but that she had no breast milk. WHAT??? This poor new baby was literally starving. My niece was hoping she would get to feed a baby but who knew on the first day within the first few hours she would get that opportunity. It took Mandy and I both to get the baby to suck on the bottle and once she started getting milk...she would stop sucking just to smile at Mandy, precious!!!! She completely finished the bottle and we sent more bottles prepared with formula with her to feed the baby. But my heart still aches at what that precious little soul is eating now? So another note in the next years list!! Can's of formula to be given to the mother so that the baby at least has maybe a month of feedings!!
Almost every child that we saw had parasitic worms and moms would say they would see them in the under ware or on their bottoms so we treated a lot of parasitic worm infections and then gave the child a month worth of vitamins. Most of the children didn't look anywhere near their stated age from malnutrition to worm infections that have deprived them of the nutrients that their bodies need. When you would go to the bathrooms in the orphanage there was a shower stall and the worms were crawling on the shower floor.....I never wanted bleach so bad in all my life and the Lord provides in mysterious ways, the very next day there was a bottle of bleach in that bathroom and it had been sterilized!! Thank you Lord for the small answers to prayers.
So back to the Pastor's house and I think I mentioned in my first blog posting how there was no hot nor warm water in the house and that it was a stand off between Bill, Mandy and I who would cave and take a cold shower first instead of a sponge bath. Well after the worms and the STD'S Mandy and I fought over the "cold" shower and I was never so glad to take a cold shower in all my life. I had mentioned to our family about my prayer life and how it all of a sudden increased dramatically while that cold water was hitting my body.....my prayers went something like, "SWEEEEET JESSSSUS!!!!" OHHHHH, was that painful but I was scrubbed from head to toe and that's all I cared about! So by day 3 or 4 Dr John and Bill come up with a solution they started boiling water on the stove and then taking it into the bathroom setting in in the tub and sponge bathing with it. Needless to say Bill and I soon became the best bath buddies!! You know couples really should conserve water....wink, wink!!
Just when I thought things couldn't have been any worse than what I saw that day with patients.....tomorrow was yet to come with new greater heartbreaks.
I often write a scripture or a spiritual thought on our bathroom mirror and a month before we left I had wrote on it for God to do seemingly amazing work through us despite our febile attempts. It was still on our mirror when we got home and I saw that God did just that. He gave us the knowledge, the energy, the health and the supplies to do what we needed to do. Today I've changed the mirror message and it now reads "Sometimes the burden is as heavy as the blessing." Now having been there and walking away with so much that still needs done I felt the "burden is as heavy as the blessing!!"
