Tuesday, May 15, 2012--Will to Live

This morning the team splits into two groups, one team stays back at HCM and the other team goes to a village named Megret which is located in the mountains past Tomars. The team drives up the mountain for about thirty minutes up to Tomars, this was the farthest the vehicle can go before the journey continues on foot. They hike with duffles and bags of rice, each weighing over 40lbs. It takes 40 minutes on foot to reach the town. It is worth it. The team sees and treats many people, some quite ill. Everyone had a positive experience . The team staying behind in Fonds Parisien has a busy day. We treat a lot of sick individuals. there is one family that stands out . A woman carries a 4 year old girl into the clinic. The girl is her niece. We ask the aunt where the child's mother is, she informs us that her sister, the child's mother, has just died from cholera. The aunt says she has eight children of her own but could not let her niece die from cholera as well. The little girl does not have the typical cholera symptoms of intractable nausea and vomiting with high volume, watery diarrhea. She is, however, severely dehydrated. Dr. Taylor decides to start IV fluids on the patient to rehydrate her and also attempt to reintroduce food to see if her bowels will tolerate it. The aunt asks if she could run home to pick up her 8 month old and check on her other children while we care for the child. We tell her that should be no problem. The little girl does well, better than we had expected,so we decide to discharge her home with the aunt. While giving discharge instructions to the aunt, she tells me and the Haitian nurses that she arrived home to find her sister laying on a mat outside of the front door. Earlier, the hospital had told her that her sister was dead, but there she was, still alive, lying on the mat. She tells us her sister is bloated from the IV fluids, and very weak. She has lost the will to live. We do not accept this. She has to receive proper care. I tell the aunt he need to get her sister back to the hospital. We drive with her and her 8 month old along a dirt road. We have to stop and walk the last quarter of a mile up a rocky trail choked strewn with underbrush. I would never have found this on my own.
We arrive to find the woman lying in a puddle of urine.  The aunt ducks into her house, and 8X10 foot room without windows and places her 8 month old on the bed next to 4 other children.  "Gade.  Watch her."
She returns outside and addresses her sister.  "Sister, this dokte is here to take you to the lopital.  You need to get well to take care of your timoun."
The woman replies, barely above a whisper
"Kite mwen, Mwen vle mouri. Mwen pa vle ale nan lopital la."
"Non! Non! Non! We will not leave you, you will not die. I do not care if you don't want to go to the lopital.  You are going. Your opinion does not matter!"
She lifts her sister, struggling under the weight.  The woman does not resist.  The aunt carries her sister 100 feet without stopping to rest.  A neighbor who notices the commotion rushes out to help, and together they carry the woman back to our truck. The aunt leans in close and speaks sternly to her sister "You can not just give up! You cannot just leave your timoun without a manman!  They need their manman badly! I have 8 timoun of my own, and I cannot afford to take in your timoun. So you WILL go, and you WILL fight, and you WILL live! You are not ALLOWED to give up!"
As we drive her to the cholera clinic, I wonder how someone can choose to give up so easily, especially when children are involved.