I am very pensive today. Today was a little rougher for me mentally and physically. We went to the Bernice Johnson Center for Women with Disabilities. It is basically a small apartment complex with some rehab items on site. These ladies live here and they also learn to crochet and knit and their stuff is sold in the US. I wish I would have had my camera with me so that you could see the living conditions. They are good for Haiti, but they are definitely not good to US standards. They basically have to go to the bathroom in port-a-potty and take showers in a tent. They are actually well taken care of with women to help with getting around, cooking, and cleaning.
Anyway, here I had a difficult time trying to communicate with a patient. Communicating things to patients about their condition is difficult enough in English, I feel somewhat helpless with a translator, because he is unable to communicate my emotions effectively. Anyway, that was taxing and a lot of times you see how far these people are from getting "rehabilitated" it is a bit overwhelming. This patient has a external fixator in her lower leg started just below the leg, she recently fell, was flown to PAP to have a good doctor examine her, and then flown back. This poor lady has been in an external fixator since January!! Long story short, the doctor told her that she needs to start putting weight through her leg because she is developing osteoporosis (she is probably in her 20's or 30's). So, today she says, "I need to go to the bathroom", so I said ok, then as she was walking (with steps approximately six inches long), I decided to make it therapy and walk with her (the whole process took about 45 minutes). Unbeknownst to me, the bathroom is an outhouse about 300 feet away!! The lady was barefoot and was scared to wear shoes (I think because she fell while wearing her shoes), so her poor feet were getting burnt by the hot concrete. I finally convinced her to let me put on the shoe after she was done using the restroom. Then, as we were walking back, I find out that this is the first time that she has walked since January (and used the actual bathroom)!! I said, "Wow! C'est tres bon (that's very good) and then asked What motivated you to do that?!" She said, "The doctor told me to start putting weight through my leg".
This is a prime example of the personality of a lot of these people here. Talk about motivation and determination!! It is another example of the poor quality of doctors that work in Haiti. There is no reason for her to have not been putting weight through her leg by now. WAY TOO LONG (In the states, you leave them on for maybe 6-8 weeks). All this is frustrating and really makes me feel overwhelmed with the size of the need here. God drastically needs to intervene here. June says that a lot of people say "If God wills it" about Haiti getting out of its current state, which she completely agrees that it will take an act of God to help this country, but she said that she sometimes gets tired of people saying that because they end up not doing anything to help with the change.
So anyway, lots of things on my mind. How do you provoke change? How can Haiti be saved? How can we effectively help the patients here, the ones we are in contact with? What happens when they leave the hospital? A lot of them have no home to return to. How can the clinic be more organized? How can the people receive good continuity of care when people are coming in and out all the time?
Anyway, thanks for reading my rant. I know I need to spend some time praying about all these things.
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