Mon, May 10, 2010

Return from Haiti

Just returned, yesterday, from my week long medical mission in Haiti. What an incredible experience! We were a medical team of five with a plastic surgeon, anesthesiologist and three nurses. We went through an organization called LEAP (Life Enhancement Association for People) and spent most of our time at Adventist Hospital in Carrefour, Haiti. We stayed in a house rented by LEAP, about 40 minutes away up in the mountains, and traveled back and forth every day to the hospital. We performed as many surgeries as possible in the one week there, and one week was not nearly enough time for us to accomplish what we needed to accomplish. A lot of our time was spent treating and dressing wounds that were still healing from the initial surgeries after the earthquake. Our last day was spent in surgery on 2 trauma cases. One was a 15 year old boy who had his hand degloved in a bread making machine. He didn't go to the nearest hospital until the next morning, so how he tolerated the pain is beyond me. He was able to receive a nerve block to numb his arm, and was actually smiling when he finally arrived at Adventist, two hours away from his starting point. The other trauma was from a man trying to work on clearing some rubble from the earthquake. A huge boulder fell on him and cut his ear and broke his jaw. We were in surgery until 10:00 pm wiring his jaw shut.

The Haitian people are incredible, given all that they have been through, and I can't say enough about the spirit of the people we met including patients and translators. I hope to have an opportunity to go back to Haiti soon, as there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. thank you to everyone who donated money and or supplies to make this trip possible!

Lynne PreFontaine RN
Indigo MedSpa Manager

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