Sabine's Story

Sabine Dessieux is the younger sister of Guesly Dessieux.  She is a Nurse Practitioner living in Kansas City. She left Haiti when she was 5 and last visited when she was 12.  Since Guesly is like a brother to me , Sabine is my new sister, complete with the steady stream of sarcasm.  She also kept a blog for her church, which sponsored her trip, her blog can be found at http://www.leawoodumc.org/ under "Sabine's Story". 

Home

I am home now.  This is going to take some time to process and recover from both physically and emotionally, but I feel like I have benefitted from this experience immensely.  Both on the macro scale and on the personal scale, I have truly realized that no one person can make it alone.  Whether we want to admit it or not, we are all dependent on each other.  The people of Haiti have been knoocked down, and they need our help right now.  As a physician going into Haiti to help out, I was not a one man show.  We saw the one man show.  He talked a good game, ate the mission's food, changed a couple of dressings, and rode off into the sunset, barely leaving behind a footprint.  My show depended on Dr. Guesly Dessieux to arrange the trip, I depended on Etienne and Betty Prophete to give me a place to sleep, food to eat, interpreters to talk, and a clinic to work in.  I relied upon my felow team members to organize the pharmacy, to get patients ready to be seen.  I also relied on my "5 moms" on the trip who would get after me for being too skinny and make me eat, who would help me find my pens, stethescope, passport, bed, whatever I needed at any particular time.  (Full disclosure: like most men and even more doctors, I am not an excessively detail oriented person.)  I relied on my wife and family who suddenly had to deal with me being gone for 10 days. I depended on my employer Capital Region to let me go and also to supply me.  I never even asked, I just said I was going and I needed medicine and supplies and I needed it tomorrow.  I also depended on the generosity of countless donors and support people.  I will actually list everyone individually, but that will have to wait another day...I'm still sleep deprived. My point is that I have a lot of people telling me what a great thing it is that I have done, but I am only the smallest part of something much larger than myslef, and I alone would never have been able to accomplish anything.  This is what being part of the human race is about.
Our final tally was about 2300 patients seen in 8 days, not bad for a spa vacation.
Our task is not finished, though.  We will be returning to Haiti.  We will be continuing to raise money.  I think we have a good network in country and we will be able to see our money and efforts directly going to help haiti stand back up on her feet.  The needs will be great in the upcoming months for physical and occupational therapists and mental health professionals.  I will continue to keep everyone updated on our progress and plans.
Thank you,

Doug Boudreau

Monday, February 1, 2009--Last clinic, Leaving Haiti, Santo Domingo

This morning we saw 300 patients.  By this time, even exhausted after a week of working and poor sleep, we are very efficient. 

Everything has started to blur together.  The team is exhausted--physically and emotionally.  We pack up to go, but our bus does not arrive.   Our back-up plan is to ride the HCM bus across the border and catch the Greyhound from Jimani.  As we fight the traffic through the border market, we see our charter bus passing the other way and flag it down.  It takes us 90 minutes to make it through the border, then it's a 6 hour bus ride to Santo Domingo.    There is little conversation, we are simply too tired.  The best part of the day is my first hot shower in more than a week.  The amount of dirt that I leave on the bottom of the shower is appalling. 

Sunday, January 31st--Port-au-Prince

Today we went to Port-au-Prince. Fortunately, there has been a lot of clean-up of the streets.  Bodies no longer block the roads. There are tent cities everywhere.

  As we entered the city, we could gradually see more and more signs of earthquake damage.  The effect was staggering.  Along the way, we saw a seven story building that had been totally reduced to a pile of rubble.  One of our translators told us that 130 people were still inside, their bodies unrecovered. As we drove in, there was more and more rubble, every block had collapsed buildings, sometimes an entire side of the street. 

It's one thing to see it on television, but to drive past block after block, unending, the scope of the situation really starts to weigh on you. 

The energy released in that 35 seconds is incalcuable in human terms, probably on the order of 30 nuclear bombs exploding under the crust of the Earth.  The devastation on the human scale is likewise hard to comprehend. 

All week long, we had been hearing individual stories of terror, heartache and loss,  now, at Ground Zero, it is almost too much to take. 

We see the Presidential Palace and the Catholic Cathedral in ruins.

Tent cities were everywhere. Fifty thousand people at each city. The conditions have been getting more and more deperate as the waste piles up.  Broken people lay in the tents.  Children have gone days without food or water.  At the same time, there are signs of the city coming back to life.  People are on the street conrners hawking their goods again, or selling fried plantains, even souvenirs like wood sculptures and paintings are again on display.  After looking most of the morning for a place to help out, we finally happen on a primary school that collapsed in the quake.  The main school building is just a facade in front of a pile of rubble.  We are told that class was in session, and about 25 children were in the building when the earthquake hit.  Their bodies lie there still, under the tons of rubble.

 Around the school building is a courtyard ringed with low buildings that were the dormatories.  These buildings are now housing around 100 people displaced by the quake.

This is where we set up shop.  We work quickly, the team is in maximum efficiency mode.  In 2 1/2 hours, we see about 250 patients. 

The people with immediately life threatening injuries from the earthquake have now either been treated or have died.  What we are seeing is either long term illness that had been neglected or new infections--communicable disease that has started to spread due to dispacement, crowding, poor water, and lack of food.  From my work station, the school building is constantly visible, and I keep thinking about how it would be if it were my son or one of my daughters under all of that brick, concrete and stone.  Then I think of all the collapsed buildings that I've seen today--thousands, and all the sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers now entombed in them.  This morning, as we were riding the bus towards Port-au-Prince, we had church of sorts, and one of the doctors with us told us of a patient he has been treating at our hospital at Fond-Parisien.  She and her twin girls were home when the Earthquake happened.  Their house collapsed around them, and she was trapped in the rubble for 2 days.  Her twin girls died in her arms.  Dean asked her if she was angry at God for what had happened to her.  She said she was not angry.  She was grateful to God to be alive and knew that she was spared bacause she has a purpose, a task in life that she hasn't done yet, and she will always have two angels with her as she goes through life.
The Port-au-Prince that I knew is gone, and this new Port-au-Prince has changed me.  We walk through life confident, even arrogant that we can pretty much handle anything, but seeing this reminds me that life is fragile and fleeting.