1/21/10- Haiti update

Hi family and friends;

The person who said “time flies when you are having fun” was so right because the past few days every hour seems like forever.  We rejoice however when we have to be so proud of our medical team who have managed to save every patient we had so far.  Please keep praying for that.  I wish I could say not with having to make difficult choice.  Many amputation are making the job very difficult.  Today, was not without these choices.  The clinic is so full, we had to open 3 classrooms, the whole cafeteria today was full of people need help, care in different ways.  We needed some orthopedic drill, it was so difficult to find and we needed to use some, we had to take the cordless drills from DH to drill our way to some bones for external fixators.  We could not find any fixators so of course Joe and Nick (my uncles) made us some from the machine shop.  We are making things happen with whatever we had.  Connie Sassi made us some easy to sit potty benches.  All this in almost no time.  Improvising our new word at Double Harvest.  The front part of the clinic is used as pre op and “triage” area.  Our nurses and doctors almost working around the clock.  Wow.  I wish I knew more about medical stuff.  Tomorrow I will learn how to put an IV and maybe Monday I get to do some stitching.  That’s my plan.  Now I hope a patient will be brave enough to let me do that.  LOL.

The Barry Gage team is out they were great.  and gave room to the doctors.  The day ended with a new arrival of 12 patients from leogane in a bus.  We put word on the radio that we have a hospital so I think tomorrow we will be busy again.  The bad thing with all this is the amount of patient that were taken care of during the first days but because of the lack of medicine and sanitary conditions they are getting infected.  Today we had to amputate 2 feet and a leg because of situations like that.  We do have one little boy, 6 years old in very critical situation.  I will not describe his injuries but it is not good.  Head trauma. I will give you his name tomorrow so we can pray for him.  One thing, Vickie, those little cars and dolls you sent us a while ago are so handy for those kids. Keep their mind busy for some time, even puts a smile in those faces sometimes.  Sorry I cannot take pictures I will try to do so sometimes.  Now, I am a little busy being a “doctor”.  I don’t dare say a nurse, their job is too difficult.  They have to deal with everybody.  Anyway, now I must go.  Everybody at Double Harvest is ok, tired, but ok.  Until tomorrow.

Have a good night.

Frantz