Hernias for Haiti and the Condom Lady

OK Guys It is midnight so I am going to have to make this short. We have such great teams here, so many good things are going on in this hospital. We have a plastic surgery team from Washington State. They came in a few days ago in the evening. That night it rained real hard and part of the house fell on a teenage girl and mangled one side of her face, the ER nurse said it looked like she was going to loose her eye, her ear and that brain matter was showing. Don't get too sick because she was wrong about all three. In the middle of the night they woke up the team they took the lucky girl in to surgery and made her perfectly beautiful. That was better care than we could get in Ukiah, we would have had to be flown to the bay area.

Laura and I are on a mission to find an orphanage to sponsor in Port au Prince. We are planning a big music festival benefit on Aug 21, to help the orphaned children here(save the date!!). Laura made friends with one of our interpreters and found out that he had placed his two girls in the Adventist sponsored orphanage (another story). Today was our day to go visit, we took off with 2 interpreters, Laura, Lynn Patti, Dale and Leanna. Oh my goodness did we fall in love with those 20 beautiful girls. What a loving, healthy home their parents are making for them. Our hearts were opened as we had fun singing, playing games and holding girls on our laps. You will be hearing more about this. They are in the picture with all of the cute girls.

Laura has been saving me these past 2 days. She has broken her vow to never do pediatrics and has joined us in the Peds ward. We are preparing to loose Charlie, so she has no choice. She will also be an ER doctor in 48 hours. Laura is the Condom Lady. News spreads fast around here and the guys know when she is coming, even patients family members are asking her for condoms. She says,"It s so funny, you do not need to know English to ask for condoms, it is the same word in Creole". We are putting condoms down in little baggies in the clinics and they just disappear.

My babies are looking good today, the tides have turned and the planets are lining up.
My sweetest girl was sitting up on her own. Leanna's baby boy was pushing up on his belly a holding his head up. I am telling you these things are miracles.

One more story and then I have to go to sleep. On the way home from the orphanage Dale, Leanna and I were dropped off at the General Public Hospital with Gregory our interpreter. It turned out that Charlie had gone there to round in the TB ward with our own ER Doc Toby Salz who is volunteering there. The driver was committed to taking Charlie back to the to the hotel and there was not enough room in the car for everyone, so Dale, Leanna, Lynn and Gregory stayed behind at the hospital to wait for the driver to come back for us. Now this hospital is huge, many buildings, some cracked, many tents of patients and it was dark. There is a gate, like at a military base and the guards only let certain people through, they are constantly arguing with people who want to get in and and are not allowed through. I had fleeting thoughts that we might get shot.

We were dressed in our scrubs sitting on a wall and a guy comes up and asks me in English if I will come help his grandmother who is over there bleeding to death. I told him I would not go unless Gregory told me it was OK. So Gregory goes off for a few minutes and comes back and says, "Yes his grandmother is over there bleeding, there is a lot of blood and yes I think you can help her. There are a lot of people around her so we might get mobbed, we have to be careful. I say, "I do not want to get mobbed". He says, "No, it will be OK". So off we go with gallant Dale ready to protect. So we go down this dark corridor around this corner and sure enough there are lots of people standing in this tight walkway and an old woman is sitting on the wall with her foot up, blood running down the wall into a pool and all over the wall. I am putting on gloves and getting some towels out of my pack and then this commotion begins and we all have to stop what we are doing and back up against the wall it is so tight with people. Suddenly a man emerges from the throng carrying a writhing 2 year old boy who is naked and crying in pain. First thing you see is his gigantic scrotum the size of a large orange, tense as it can be sticking up above his body. OMG, this is an emergency. The father asks me if I can help him, can I fix it, is there anything I can do. They have been waiting to get into the hospital and they won't let them in. I tell him he has to get in, this kid needs to go to surgery right now. He says they will not let him in. So I tell him to go to the Hopital Adventiste, we have a surgeon on duty. Gregory explains and they take of running. I find out later they did not have a car. I finally get to the bleeding woman and show the grandson how to put pressure on the wound and hold it until she can be seen in the hospital. I knew that the bleeding had stopped and she would be fine. He was afraid and I told him to pray for the healing power of God to come through his hand, to have faith that she would be healed. He smiled and beamed at me and thanked me profusely for praying with him. We took off running as more people started pressing forward to get to me.

Our driver showed up soon and we went back to the hospital. Sure enough our boy arrived at the same time. By this time he was vomiting, screaming and his scrotum was bigger. I took him to the ER and there was no doctor to be found. I ran upstairs and woke up Mohammad. He came down and said immediately it was an incarcerated hernia. The surgery team fell into place and the boy was healed!!! They saved him, his bowel was saved and he is resting downstairs. I gave Mohammad a big hug, he is our new best friend.

Mohammad has done 18 hernias in 2 days and has 11 scheduled for today, he is calling this "Hernias for Haiti". The surgery picture above is Mohammad with the little boy.