Karma payment plan

 

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.