mooching internet access

4/24/2010 7:55 pm EST (8:55 pm EDT)


A bit of a surprise day today. I was expecting to just work at Dr. Joey's hospital, which is fun, but a little trying at times, since the volume of patients comes in scattered throughout the day instead of in a big non-stop cluster, and the med stash is a little limited at times. However, I brought a bag full of meds to his clinic, so that helped with the med issue (he hadn't had me bring supplies, since I hadn't gotten the hang of when I would be going direct to his hospital instead of through LAMP, which is well stocked). That helped with the morning's patients. On the drive over, however, Dr. Joey stopped to talk to a pastor friend of his, who, as it turns out, was having a handful of doctors running a clinic in his yard today. Dr. Joey asked if they needed help, and so I ended up coming over for the afternoon to see patients with them. The group was largely from Brazil, and mostly spoke Portugese, though there were some who spoke English. My translator was a very cool nurse from... I have no idea where, maybe Brazil? Anywho, he works with WEC International, and has been an international nurse for 10 years. He was fluent in English, French, Spanish, Portugese, and a couple African languages that I can't remember. Wasn't fluent in Kreyol, but we made do. I must have ended up at the pediatric table, since the majority of patients I saw were children, but I got a few adults, including a woman who was about 5 months pregnant, who needed vitamins and worm meds, as well as her 13 month old son, whom she was worried about developmentally since he was not walking yet. I made arrangements for her to bring the child to Dr. Joey's for a little more evaluation as far as how well he could walk and to recheck on his cough. That way, she'll also know where he is for getting the remainder of her prenatal vitamins, even though she has an OB/GYN who cares for the pregnancy otherwise (she's apparently a repeat c-section or VBAC patient, since her son was born by c-section). There was also an older woman with severe hypertension, who had run out of her BP meds and came to get more, since she could not afford to buy them. Since she did not know what she'd been on before, we gave her HCTZ and captopril and set her up to follow up in Dr. Joey's clinic for refills. I tried not to send too many his way, since his hospital is completely free (and has been since the earthquake), and he's a little limited on medications to essentially what can be donated in. However, the last lady I saw was a heartbreaker. She was probably in her 30s, and complained of poor appetite and insomnia. It'd been really bad since the earthquake, but it turns out she was pretty poor and depressed before the earthquake. Her mother had died recently, and that put her into the depression, I think. Then the earthquake happened, and she is now on the streets, without a job, without a home, with nothing to her name. She has no support, no church or family or anything as far as I could tell. We asked if anything made her happy, and she could not think of anything. I gave her fluoxetine (this crew had SSRI's! Woo!) and set her up to see Dr. Joey next week to get a referral for the psychiatrist to follow up with her.

Thinking about that woman, I can't help but wonder if there was some way someone could adopt a block of neighborhood and offer to feed and shelter the inhabitants in exchange for them cleaning up and maintaining the neighborhood. It'd initially need an influx of money and food to support the clean-up, haul out the collapsed concrete walls, etc, but once that block was cleaned up and set up for decent water and septic, the people could be put to work doing some sort of other productive work that might help sustain them, like cooking good inexpensive food for neighboring blocks.

I guess Joey kind of does that, within his hospital, though. He has 5 paid staff people, and a number of volunteers who help out in exchange for the priviledge to stay in his yard occasionally and get a couple meals a day. Dave is one of those volunteers. He is the one who walked me home last night, and he walked me home again tonight. He is fairly fluent in English and French in addition to his native Kreyol, and translates for me on occasion. He's also apparently a decent driver, and aspires to be an ambulance driver. I hope he makes it. He's got a good heart.

Tomorrow and Monday are going to be a bit of an adventure. I'm going with Dr. Joey to his hospital for the morning and early afternoon, but then am going to hopefully go with the Brazilian group to a town a few hours south of PAP to run a clinic there on Monday. They will be camping and apparently have a tent and stuff I could borrow, and are willing to feed me in exchange for coming and helping do medical work. It'll be really neat to see another part of Haiti, and I think it will be a lot of fun. It means I'll miss Cite Soleil for a day, but I'll still have 5 more days out there (unless more extras crop up).

-- Gina
 
4/25/2010 2:20 pm EST (3:20 pm EDT)
i am at the church up the street from my hotel, mooching internet on a eee pc, to update.  i am waiting with the brazil crew to go to port au perl? to run a clinic there tomorrow.  It will be a long bus ride, but worth it, i think. and i can chat with tod today!