Reflections on the last week in Haiti

Awoke this morning to the news of the 8.8 quake in Chile.  The aftershocks have been huge as well.  It's hard to imagine how the resources; physical, personnel and emotional, can stretch for another disaster of this magnitude.  How can we, the people of the world, stay motivated to help when we are overwhelmed by news of disasters over and over?

The people of Haiti are in no way ready to lose any of the relief assistance that is there, in fact they need more, but relief organizations are going to need to pull out of Haiti in order to respond to Chile.  This will put more responsibility for the long term relief on to the established/traveling clinics, hospitals and smaller aid organizations and the short term volunteers who are helping them.

Each of us need to be thinking about how we can assist everyone else in this world...we never know where the next disaster could be... It could always occur in our own back yard.

Many of you may remember me talking about our Haitian nurse/my roommate.  Fabiola came over with us to La Romana.  I've had the chance to meet one of her sisters, brother (Alex) & his family today.  I learned that Alex is a translator for the "Batey" (Haitian sugarcane villages here in DR) clinics and a university student on the weekends in Santo Domingo.  He had come out to Haiti in one of the first two weeks to translate for the medical teams and to find Fabiola.  He was the one who arranged for Fabiola to work with the medical teams.  Just before leaving Haiti, Fabiola's other sister, Abigail, dropped by & I was able to meet her as well.

17h25 - Cyndi, the volunteer who is the Hospitality Assistant at the dorms here in La Romana, took two of us to the Good Samaritan Hospital for a tour.  The hospital currently has 20 beds, but third & fourth floors are being constructed for laundry rooms, rooms for 44 more beds and a top floor for rooms to house medical residents and nurses.  Everybrick of this hospital has been laid by the hands of a volunteer or by donated money.  Teams from all over the US, but mostly from NewEngland, come on a yearly basis to continue the building efforts and to deliver health care in the bateys. The dream is to become a teaching hospital with tropical medicine rotations.

The last few of days in Port au Prince were very good.  Wednesday we went to a relatively small tent village on the back side of the airport named Cazeau.  All of the tents were made of sticks and scraps of cloth.  Very few had any plastic protection.  Our team was invited to the community by a youth group named FISEH.  At the end of the clinic the FISEH leader gave us an official "Thank you."  They said that they were not able to help their community medically after the earthquake, but with our help they were able to give assistance and were greatful.  I don't have access to the internet yet, but the backs of their T-shirts had FISEH.org written on the back.

This particular clinic was held in the front yard/driveway of a private home.  They graciously cleaned a bed out of a room adjacent to the house for us to use for our pharmacy.  There were stairs to the roof of the house where several of us went to sit under the shade of a tree.  I was able to see the airport and the tent village from a very different perspective up there.  Since this was a smaller village, we ended up seeing only 311 patients.

One of the docs had a thermometer with her on Wednesday. Clinic started at 09h56 with the temperature at 89°F and finished at 13h18with a temperature of 101°F. And we wondered why we were feeling hot and tired at the ends of clinics?

Thursday we went to another church in Carrefour, at Avenue Christock.  To date this was the largest church in which we worked.  How exciting to have lots of pews for seating at all of the stations: Vital signs, waiting for the "Providers", 15 spots with a "Provider", translators and patient seating (a doc at each end of a pew with over the counter meds for distribution in the middle), pharmacy line, de-worming medication line & finally the food and clothing line before exiting the church.

Four patients at this clinic stuck out for me.  An older woman had an obvious goider on her thyroid, an obvious lack of iodine.  A young woman by the name of Louise Germain had been hit on the right temple by a falling brick. T he cut had been sutured on 12 January, but she didn't have anyone to remove them till the 25th of February when I saw her.  She was also having constant headaches with nausea since her head injury. T aking a little extra time to do some Cranial OMT really helped a lot.

The last two patients who come to mind were two very bright and curious little kiddos.  St Jean is 3.5 years old and Delancy is 6.  Neither of them had anything seriously wrong with them, but it was their smiles, friendliness and curious minds that kept my attention.  I keep wondering what type of education these two will ever get coming from this very poor community.

These two little ones were the ones I ended up giving the two signed stickers I had brought with me.  Two of my US kiddo patients had each given me a sticker to give to a child in Haiti.  I had taken photos of my home patients holding the stickers.  I gave the photo with the sticker to the Haitian children.  Their faces lit up like stars.  They were even more excited for me to take a photo with them and the photo and the sticker.  Now I'll need to make copies of these pictures for my US patients when I get home.

It's very late, after midnight.... There have been multiple interruptions to my writing today.  Tomorrow I will try to post more memories before I forget them.

Safe in La Romana, Dominican Republic

It's just after one in the morning local time.  We arrived safely on the bus about thirty minutes ago, 10.5 hours after leaving Port au Prince, Haiti.  I'm laying on the tallest bunk bed I've ever seen in my life.  Best not sit up & stretch or I hit the ceiling fans.  Time for sleep & I'll write about the last couple of days tomorrow.

Benefits of Theraputic Massage

Hi everyone!  Let's talk a little about the benefits to theraputic massage.   Massage as a method of body work has been around for hundreds of years.  Getting its start in western practices, massage works on all systems of the body, muscular, internal, as well as psychological.  In the past 50 years massage has made a progression from being thought of as a "treat" to being considered a necessary means in combating muscle tension, stress, and injury.

As a practicing massage therapist since 2005, what I see most often in clients is upper back and neck pain as a result of poor posture, stress, and tension.  If you are someone, for example, spending significant hours sitting at a desk, holding a phone, or carrying heavy items, you could be suffering from upper back and neck tension and not even realize it.  The human body is  amazing with what we can learn to live with.  Maybe it's waking up with a kink in your neck, or chronic pain building up over time, in either case massage is an effective way to battle discomfort that comes from muscle pain.

Other benefits to massage therapy include:

    * Alleviate low-back pain and improve range of motion.
    * Assist with shorter, easier labor for expectant mothers
    * Shorten maternity hospital stays.
    * Ease medication dependence.
    * Enhance immunity by stimulating the body’s lymphatic defense system.
    * Exercise and stretch weak, tight, or atrophied muscles.
    * Help athletes of any level prepare for, and recover from, strenuous workouts.
    * Improve the condition of the body’s largest organ—the skin.
    * Increase joint flexibility.
    * Lessen depression and anxiety.
    * Promote tissue regeneration, reducing scar tissue and stretch marks.
    * Pump oxygen and nutrients into tissues and vital organs, improving circulation.
    * Reduce postsurgery adhesions and swelling.
    * Reduce spasms and cramping.
    * Relax and soften injured, tired, and overused muscles.
    * Release endorphins—amino acids that work as the body’s natural painkiller.
    * Relieve migraine pain.

The power of body work is undeniable. Regardless of how we justify it (pampering, rejuvenating, therapeutic) or the reasons we seek it out (a luxurious treat, stress relief, pain management), massage therapy can be a powerful ally in your healthcare regimen.

Leslie Smith, LATC, MT

Haiti Update

First Dr. Shay should be leaving tomorrow in the afternoon from Haiti, traveling to the Dominican Republic before she flies home on Monday.  Hopefully she will be leaving one more note here before she returns. 

I'd like to invite everyone to continue to visit this blog.  She took along a small camera that works quite well.  So we'll be posting some of the photographs that she took, along with her thoughts and feelings about the trip.

 Thank you for all your support!

Tom Shay

Update on Friday, February 26, 2010 at 1:27PM by Eva Shay, DO

Dr. Shay just called and said that they were just loading up the bus for the 8 hour drive back to the Dominican Republic.

Drouiller

The last team with which I will be working has arrived. This is another big team like the first week. We have 15 docs/PA's/NP's this time.  That means that we can see a lot more people at any time.

We had a short day (we left the compound at noon) because the truck with supplies from DR was delayed at the border this morning.  They weren't sure if the Haitian boarder control is starting to crack down on incoming vehicles or if it had something to do with the second earthquake in two nights having occurred early this morning.  The truckwith the new supplies finally arrived, was unloaded, reloaded and we were off.

This clinic was different because we were not in an enclosed space, but in a large open area beneath trees and between some buildings.  This time the clinic was in view of the initial patients line & not behind a wall & gate of a school, church or private home.

At one point it got interesting when there was a lot of shoving and yelling in the line.  Fortunately we have a great team of leaders who got it under control rapidly.

Even with the shortened day we were able to see 368 patients.  Hopefully we'll be able to see about 500 a day over the next two days and then a shortened day again Friday before we head back to LaRomana, Dominican Republic, in the early afternoon.

I met a patient today who is my age... only nine days younger than myself.  It ends up that she has been having pain in her lower right ribs for the past six months.  Initially it sounded like she might have a nasty form of low grade pneumonia that just hadn't been treated, with difficulty breathing deeply, pain with breathing, occasional painful cough, etc, but she wasn't having fevers and her lungs were clear.  When I touched her ribs she began explaining to Ephezian, my translator, that about six months ago she had been caught in a crowd that was running and was knocked down and fell on a sewing machine(street taylor), landing on her ribs.  They have hurt since then.

Some simple seated OMT put her ribs back in place and she felt much better.  I've rarely seen anyone so relieved to know that she didn't have a severe lung infection and feeling so much better after the OMT.  She made my day knowing that her life had been so changed by such ashort encounter.

Great news!  We now have a large batch of sulfa ointment again for all the fungal and bacterial skin infections... AND...  We have been restocked with Piperzine, the worm medicine!  What a simple blessing.

Coming home this afternoon we passed the tent village just on the other side of the wall from our US troops stationed at the end of the international airstrip.  Traffic was backed up worse there than usual.  Once we got closer we were able to see US armed troops for crowd control and three Samaritan's Purse semi trucks passing out food and tarps.  Another blessing of the day.

The first blessing of today was actually for our personal safety.  Just before 01h30 this morning I awoke to dead silence followed by a very deep rumbling noise and then about five seconds of another aftershock.  Immediately dogs in the entire neighborhood started barking & there were lots of loud voices outside our compound.

Jeremy was at our doorway immediately telling everyone to vacate the building.  The locals were outside immediately; very calm, but excited.  Mattresses began to be pulled out of rooms all over the compound.  Many of us gathered and sang and prayed for the peace and comfort of heart for those afraid and safety for all.

Lila and Fabiola were very concerned that any of us would consider going back inside to sleep.  Miriam & I decided to sleep the rest of the night under the stars and mango trees.  For the first time in mylife I slept on a mattress laid on two long school benched facing each other.  Within an hour of the quake I was asleep.

Today, the quake this morning became a touch point in communication with my patients.  They all laughed and indicated that I understoodthem better once they knew that I had chosen to sleep outside under mango trees this morning like the rest of them.

Several of our local team have really pushed for Miriam & me to sleep under the stars with them tonight.  I hated to tell them no.  It's so much cooler outside, but with the team being so large it would make things difficult.

Mom told me today that both today's aftershock (and the one yesterday morning that almost all of us slept through) were both 4.7's with the same epicenter as the original quake.  The news reported minimal additional damage and no new injuries.  This was a HUGE blessing.  Thankyou for your continued prayers for our safety and the Haitan people.