New Update from Joan

We have the first of what may be 3 ACC medical teams here right now. They arrived in Port on Friday and the thought was for them to work at a hospital in Port, King's Hospital, that was not too badly damaged. When they arrived there they found it well staffed and taken care of so they started looking into coming out our way for which we are very thankful. The are up at Bonne Fin Hospital which is about an hour's drive up in the mountains, but a very beautiful location. This hospital, because of mismanagement and other factors over the years, had all but closed down. The plan was to close it this month. There was no full time Dr.s anymore and a real shortage of nurses because they can't pay them. I always felt so bad when I would go up there and see this kind of run down, but full of potential, hospital with empty bed after empty bed in a country full of sick people. This last week it was overflowing. They put an announcement on the radio that there would be a bone doctor there and in just 2 days they had about 200 patients. The doctor who was there and another orth surgeon were just overwhelmed. The amount and the severity of the injuries were incredible. After working for a week and doing amputation after amputation because of infections. They headed back to the States and now our team will take over. There are still some amputations to be done, but there are many operation or reopening wounds and cleaning them and reclosing them. They've had 4 patients die at Bonne Fin and 3 so far at our clinic. There is a forth, a young lady who they thought wasn't going to make it, but she was looking better yesterday.
Yesterday, we went up to Bonne Fin for the day and Sarah, Alisha, & Sheila stayed to help out. Tim will run up in the morning today carrying supplies, oxygen, and some other patients and then when he comes back down he typically will bring patients down that need care here. It is such a good feeling to know you have doctors here that know what they are doing. Hopefully there can be some good healing take place. Thanks to all who are sharing their family members for the week. God bless you for it.

What day is it? Has it really been 13 days since this all happened? I can't imagine living in a country that is always at war because this is what it feels like ... a war zone.