January Medical Trip Day 6

Today was the last day of the clinic for those who didn't just read the last paragraph of the previous blog. It was very overcast when we left and I was worried about the trip up the mountain but the rain held off long enough for us to get up to the clinic. We got set up and it began to mist a little while we took the first patients.

 I began to just be a runner for the doctors when they decided that it was going to rain harder and that we needed tarps. So Dominic, Eric, Tony, and myself made tarps out of operating table covers and put them on top of the sheets that were already there to provide shade. Eventually even those failed and the doctors had to move inside. Julie asked for some help with something and since I wasn't doing anything important I volunteered with Jess the EMT. Now would be the time to mention that Julie is a surgeon and little did I know was basically asking for help with surgery. I was basically a shelf for her to put stuff but it was really cool to be involved in something that important. The guy had some kind of growth on his shoulder and she just cut it out and sewed it up but I had never seen a surgery before so it was pretty cool.

By the time the surgery was over it was absoultely pouring, and we were quickly running out of supplies. People were standing in the rain waiting to be helped and it rained harder and harder. We decided to take as many patients as we could until we ran out of meds and then give everyone a parasite pill and a few ibuprofen to take for pain as necessary. The nurses and the doctors absolutely flew through patients and we took in over 110 people which brought the grand total to 404 people in three days.

We broke down the clinic with the help of a few of the Haitians and loaded up the trucks for an extremely treacherous trip down the mountain. We had to take off our shoes before we got in the trucks because they were so muddy. We took it extremely slow and got back safe but extremely wet.

When we got back to the hotel I took my boots to wash them in the ocean and as I was walking down to the water I heard "hello Messi" and I turned to see the guy from two years ago who thought I looked like the Argentinian soccer player Lionel Messi (see previous blogs). It was so cool to see him again and we caught up. He was one of the people who was selling stuff by the hotel. I told him I'd buy something from him and I wouldn't haggle because I trust him. He actually gave me a pretty good deal on a painting and he told me he would give me a gift tomorrow. I'm not sure what that is going to be like or even if he will be able to show up but we will see.

We had dinner which was really good fish and lasagna, as well as the usual rice and potato things. We debriefed and prayed for a whole lot of things for a half hour or so. People have gone to bed one by one until it is just 5 of us left around the coffee table in the lobby now. We leave tomorrow at 3ish to head home after a market and maybe some other stuff around Port-Au-Prince. This trip has been amazing and as usual I don't want to leave. Tomorrow is one last Haitian experience for the year and I can't wait to make the trip