Karma payment plan

its 3:30 and i listen to the conversations of people trying to orginize,i listen to the sounds of the planes landing over my head. ive never worked this hard and i feel like i will age to fast if i continue, my plane of staying in the hotel or going to the un base to relax interupted by the refusal of my night nurses to work nights. 3 of us have taken the lead as nurse coordinators but we are all needed all the time. tomorrow i will relax, i know that now matter what the need will be great and i will be more effective if i rest. its a hard call to tell shut down the triage and turn people away and it breaks my heart. in the laat two hours we had to more sad codes, and today at least 2 deaths. i sit with the son of the decease and i listen to his stories. at least the us army has given us 40 body bags now and 5 of their traned emts. we are doing amazing things here we are a 200 bed hospital and every second exspanding, now we just needed nurses.i am learning about connections and politics but also about world community. i have met some of the best people in the world here from canada argintina peru... we work as a team and i help the mexican rescue team to food and shelter. i know i ramble know it is late and i am tired. i cried today a raraty. i help take an ekg of my favorite patient. just 3 hours ago a news team interviewed him and i. 2 weeks ago i assisted in his amputation. the death, the pain, the hopelessness can be over welmlming and everyone stops you to ask if you can help them. at the same time the strangth and the spirit  are stronge. the other night the whole tent broke out in song. i will try to write more and i will fix my tired spelling errors later... now i sleep for a couple hours and then the ground hogs day starts again...

will write more when i can, just wanted to let everyone know i am doing we

 

1/20 today was a long day, I was the OR nurse and tech again. My main concern getting everything as sterile as possible. I learned that you cant soak instrumentation in bleach for to long, it will rust, we had one bottle of instrumentation cleaner set up for part of the day, we only had one bottle of solution, and I learned that you can not leave instrumentations in that or it will eat them.  We have lots of supplies but not the time or manpower to go threw them and I franticly run around trying to find things we will need like sterile drapes and gauze and gloves. The anesthesiologist do amazing work and lookily someone brought down  a portable pulse ox that we have no other option but to split between the two patients getting surgery, we are still waiting for O2 to arrive as well. The doctors help me out and our team seems to be starting to make sense of this craziness.  We work hard and well the Doctors mop the floor as I scrub the instruments. I’m sure when this is done people will say “why didn’t you do it this way, or that way?” And my reply to them is why didn’t you come down and make it that way. I did 19 surgeries today. 2 going on at a time and the doctor at both tables try to teach me the names of the instruments. The surgeries  on top of wooden tables in a sectioned off portion of our tent. We had a belt for a tourniquet but it broke, I hold the leg as they saw away with the little hand held saw. Amputations are common here. We had surgeons and an OR nurse who knew the instruments names only in French, at one point , but its hard to coordinate things here when people stay for short times and the flights out of here are so unreliable that you might need to walk out of surgery to catch a plan. I have seen a lot in the OR and that is were I have spent must of my time, I cant even describe the wounds I see. Today the orphans seemed to start to break down, all smiles and patients yesterday the reality that their family is gone hits them. I drive threw town in the back of a pick up truck and take in the scenes, buildings toppled, hundreds of people sleeping in the street.

 

 Since I got here it has been go go go. My first job was helping caring bodies to the morgue, after, talking the morgue into taking body parts. 30 hours later I collapsed for some sleep. I haven’t had a chance to think about what was really going on around me. I stay strong though and so does everyone here, we joke around we laugh because we need to and we care and comfort. I almost broke down twice, once when we were getting ready to remove a little girls hand and she just kept screaming for her mom, and then again when the team of nurses from the Haitian nurses union arrived to relieve us from what could have been another 24 hour shift, the energy and friendly smiles brought tears to my eyes.  Everyone here is very compassionate, and I love the openness of them, we are all connected even though we don’t speak the same languages. I run into Ecuadorian Rescue workers and we talk and laugh and I recall that recently ended adventure, fondly and I elieve everything happens for a reason and right now I am were I am supposed to be. 

 

My thoughts are not very well organized and my words might be a little random at this point. I will say I’ve learned you can do what you want to do within reason; only a couple days ago my goal was to help Haiti. It started in Boston were Northeastern helped me gather supplies and raise money rapidly, in Miami I worked on large supply drives and meet compassionate people from all walks of life, I talked my self on to a private jet to here and now I work with some of the hardest working  people I have ever met from all over with the same goal, to try to save these people, and to show love. 

1/15 continuing my Ecuador blog but now in the United States. I have a renewed sense of energy, belonging and of community for my country, and my world.  I have realized that for things to happen people need to come together and make them work.  I have seen the lack of organization and action do to poverty, lack of education, lack of personal, and even at times do to rigidity of structure. I have also seen the organization skills of some great leaders such as my mentor Catherine O’Conner and I have bin in awe of them.  But now I realize we need more people like her, and it could even be me, and I push a side my insecurities and shyness, “I’m going for the gusto.” We need to communicate we need to find comfort in closeness. Within 24 hours of these thoughts I am on a plane headed to Miami. 5 bags full of medical supplies and 1000 dollars to my name, thanks to donations. All the details aren’t laid out. But I have learned they can be ironed out in transit.  For now I have connections to the national nursing association who is tirelessly trying to organize and figure their own plans out. A priest in Fort Lauderdale who is trying to get together a mission trip to go to were his churches and orphanages used to be, a FEMA worker and a hostel that said I could crash there for cheep, a hand full of people looking to help but who don’t know how, and a computer.  Technology! Lets get together lets collaborate let’s take action! I will work diligently tonight making more connections finding out what is going on and were and helping to expedite the process.  I will do what ever it takes, now and always. I will continue to work to get care to those who need it.  Thank you all for supporting me. 

3 months flew by and I’m sitting in the airport right now reflecting on all my experiences.

Melancholic, tired and in transition- I have learned a lot; about me, about patients, about health and cultures. i will write more but for now my head spins and the lack of sleep and the thin air here is starting to wear on my thought processes.