Okay, so the trip is real. Tickets have been purchased. I\u2019m totally confident that I can work the clutch and the brakes on this machine until about noon on Saturday. That\u2019s a good 36 hours about which I have confidence. Better than usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Friday we take a plane from Boston to Santo Domingo in the DR. We\u2019re staying at a Quality Inn near the airport overnight \u2013 meeting the rest of the team there. 15 of us. 5 physicians, 2 nurses, and the rest of us. Most have been to Haiti before. In the morning, we\u2019re hiring a driver (or two \u2026) to get us from Santo Domingo to the Jimani (pronounced \u201cJimminy\u201d) border crossing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That that point we hit one of the truly major make or break points on the trip: We expect that the Family Health Ministries van will meet us at the border crossing. They\u2019re also bringing a truck for the supplies \u2013 as well as guards. Okay, they\u2019re probably just bringing guys we know. That\u2019s better than nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I fully expect that we\u2019ll get to sit and stare at the border crossing for a couple of hours, hoping that our transport shows up. It\u2019s gonna be an awesome period during which I learn a lot about the moral constitution of my teammates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nervous? Me? Nah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assuming that the truck shows, we\u2019re planning to arrive in Blanchard (AKA Terre Noir), just North West of the Port Au Prince airport on Saturday evening. We\u2019ll go to church on Sunday. Yes yes, I know. I\u2019m an atheist. However, perhaps (in the words of the New York Times) \u201ca God who never answers is better than nothing.\u201d Also, the faith of the people I\u2019ve met in Haiti is real, applied, and useful to them. Better than most anything I saw growing up in the suburbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Either Sunday afternoon or Monday morning we\u2019ll start seeing patients. At that point, things go totally off the map. I received a forwarded email (via my dad) from a man who was in country last week. Here\u2019s a representative chunk:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
spent the bulk of last week working in an orphanage that we turned into a hospital down the road from the real hospital where the surgeons did non stop surgery. lots of ortho trauma, neuro and spine trauma, open wounds, burns, blunt and open trauma to chest, abdomen, pelvis and extremities, crush injuries to just about every part of the body,despair of families split apart searching among the wounded for each other etc\u2026..we put in 12-14 hr days and shifts. teams from all over the world converged at our clinic and hospital which was right on the border of haiti and the dom rep.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n He continues, after a bit more detail:<\/p>\n\n\n\n these beautiful people are truly amazing despite the devastation of their country and have a silent dignity that i can not do justice to by trying to describe with mere words. the survivors were mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters, etc and from all walks of life from carpenters and ship captains to lawyers, doctors, poets, authors, masons, bussiness owners all left with nothing at home but complete devastation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n He was at the border. We\u2019re headed for the core. On the other hand, we\u2019re a week later. We may well be able to run an ambulatory care clinic and refer off to the hospital ship. Who knows? I just really hope to not have to do amputations with no sedation. Hell, I would really<\/strong> like to maintain my lifetime record of \u201czero\u201d instances where I had to take a knife to human flesh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nervous? Me? Nah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I do know is that we\u2019re packing food for a week, clothing for 90 degree weather, and all the supplies we can fit into our two x fifty pound checked luggages. I\u2019m treating this as a BYO medical practice. It\u2019s gonna be awesome. In addition to bandages, splints, pain meds, and so on \u2013 I\u2019m adding things like knives, basic sets of tools, tarps, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ll work as long as we can, through Friday, and then make our way back to the part that I\u2019m actually the most nervous about: Getting from the border back<\/strong> to Santo Domingo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m looking for a Satellite Internet connection. Seems to be a mere matter of about $100 bucks to rent the gear for two weeks, and then something like $8 per MB. Yikes. Still, I would very much like to be able to post while I\u2019m out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m also looking for ideas. If you have ideas on topics ranging from personal security, to useful tools to bring, to how to best help these people: I would love to hear them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Okay, so the trip is real. Tickets have been purchased. I\u2019m totally confident that I can work the clutch and the brakes on this machine until about noon on Saturday. That\u2019s a good 36 hours about which I have confidence. Better than usual. On Friday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-haiti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1772,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions\/1772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}