Monday, January 18, 2010

Udate from Joan

Tim and I spent the last two nights up at the clinic helping out the exhausted doctors. and nurses. Only in Haiti does a builder and a schoolteacher spend the first night assisting with two operations in the operating rooms here and the second night helping set broken bones and putting on casts. The situation here is incredible and up till today, they were still bringing hurt patients to an already overflowing clinic. At this point the small easy fixes are done and the severe, sometimes overwhelming, how-in-the-world-do-you-fix-THAT cases are what is left. These poor people have been suffering now for 5 days and the staff is exhausted which can cause some short tempers. From broken pelvis', femurs, arms etc. to feet and legs cut open to the bone and full of infections, I have never seen so much suffering.
The good news is that 2 orthopedic surgeons and 3 others, landed here in Cayes this morning bringing supplies with them. They are not planning to work here at our clinic, but rather up at Bonne Finn. This will still be a tremendous help and will pull some of the excess up to Bonne Fin. I took a doctor and some translators up to Bonne Fin today and then stayed while they did the rounds of some of those who heard by the radio that there was a team coming and have been waiting since Saturday. There were so many patients however, that they didn't even see half of them before I came back down at 6:00 pm.

We are at total peace knowing we are right where God wants us to be... "for such a time as this".

Now I have to add my 2 cents worth. Joan actually went in to nurses training first, found out the sight and smell of blood made her sick and changed her major to teaching. In fact, if I remember correctly blood made her faint. She has come a long way!

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