One thing I forgot to say yesterday is that the rest of the team, the ones that stayed home, saw 300 patients. Today everyone stayed. Word has gotten around about our presence here. This morning, the first patients started arriving at about 2 am. By 6 am, the porch was full. At 8 am, when we started, we had to open up the church next door as a triage area because there were 300 people there already. The day was crazy busy. We did not have enough translators, so most of the day I worked without one. Guesly worked in the same room as me, so I had him when I got stuck, but my Creole has improved to the point that I can get through most visits alone. Just imagine your doctor with a 3 year old's vocabulary, and you begin to understand what a challenge it is for them to go through, seeing me. There is an awful lot of pneumonia and asthma like illness in the patients who are coming from Port-au-Prince. it's probably due to all the dust from the Earthquake, speaking of which,I felt my first real deal earthquake today' People around here are very jumpy about the aftershocks. It was a 4.1, enough to shake a little, but no damage. With all the medicine that was donated by the hospitals or bought from money donated to us, we are definitely able to handle sicker patients, and do a better job than the last time I was here. 9 hours and 522 patients later, we were finished.
Well,most of us were finished. we are developing a census of inpatients that need tending overnight, so our nurses are rotating shifts to care for them 24 hours a day. The nurses working nights are still up and working the next day after maybe a couple hours of rest.
Dr. Boudreau! Good work. I'm so impressed you got to go to Haiti. I wish I could be there with you all.... Duncan found this on the CRMC website. I will be reading and living vicariously through you. Strength and endurance to the entire team, Brande Harris
ReplyDeleteSo Happy for what you are doing! Thank You so much
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