Brian Leftwich, a HandsOn Network staff member is volunteering in Haiti and sharing his experiences here.
I wanted to share an excerpt from my friend’s blog. She is a PA with us here and the women on the medical team are my heroes. Tonight I held down a 3 week old infant, so we could get an IV started. I am pretty sure I will never forget his screams as they searched for a vein. I consider myself so honored that these children would share their lives with me. Even if it is only because I have a smile and give amazing hi-5′s.
“This week’s good moments… A little boy of about 8 years old flashed me an obscene finger gesture as he stared at me through the bars on the truck. “No,” I yelled at him, flashing back the peace sign. “La pe! La pe!” (Peace. Peace.) He looked taken aback for a moment, then lifted his index finger to join his middle finger. “La pe..?” he said tentatively to me. “La pe!” I gestured back, encouragingly, fingers raised in the universally recognized vee of peace. Suddenly a smile lit up his face, and he waved his peace sign vigorously shouting, “La pe!! La pe!” His buddies quickly followed suit. If only all peace talks were so simple.
Antoinette, with the most perfect, fragile, angelic face and soft, musical voice. Crushed under a wall inside of her house while pregnant, with one leg amputated and another crushed, was told this week we could remove the metal external fixator holding together her shattered tibia. And that she is now allowed to walk. She is our last patient finally cleared to walk. When told, she immediately stared off into space, rocking back and forth and chanting something repetitive. Concerned she was fearing the upcoming procedure, I asked our translator what she was saying. “She’s saying, ‘Thank you God, thank you God…’ he said, matter of factly. Lying in the caring arms of Dr. Jenn, with eyes closed, softly singing, the stabilizing metal rods were one by one removed.
Baby Kenny, the three pound near-death septic baby, for whom we artificially breathed every three seconds in the back seat of our truck on my first day in Haiti…fighting for his life…whose mother wailed in fear of his imminent death…is now back in our care. And through the patient education of Beth our midwife, is now breastfed by his teenage mother. And this week, hit a whopping five pounds.
Patrick, a 13 year old boy who presented to our clinic a few days after the earthquake with his tibia bone broken and jutting out through his skin, will get his metal external fixator device off next week as well. He’s had a long, challenging course, complicated by recurrent infection and skin grafting. A young man with great grit and courage. He currently walks around with crutches that he’s decorated with small sayings in English written in Sharpie pen. My favorite is a spelling error, where he mistook an “n” for an “m”. It reads, “I BELIEVE IM GOD”
Rony, 11 year old boy with a crushed, scarred right face and bot fly larvae removed from his eye orbit, who wandered the street for 6 weeks without care before finding treatment, picked up a pen today. And drew a self portrait. Of a beautiful symmetrical boy.
Jameson, a young boy we found in the slum of Twa Bebe, near the plastic bottle and pig filled river, went home this week. We’d found him in a bright green, dirty cast extending from his abdomen to his foot — treatment for an unstable femur fracture. He’d been released to the streets with no follow-up…destined to outgrow his restrictive green prison. We were able to scoop him up, get follow-up orthopedic care, ultimately remove his cast, and provide him with physical therapy. A beautiful moment, as he walked with us down the cement path to his home, assisted by his crutches. He paused at the door to his single room cinder block home and a woman came out — his mother. She cradled his face gently in her hands, staring into his eyes. And kissed him on the forehead as tears welled in her eyes. She then folded her hands across her heart, turned to look at us, and bowed her head, saying “Merci…merci….” Jameson, in typical preteen boy fashion, shrugged away his mom’s attention with a grimace, and wandered over to sit on the stoop — apparently his favorite spot. The spot from which we’d plucked him. Coming back to life. Yeah, it’s been a good week.” -Barbie
