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- Nov 12, 2007
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Well I just got back a little while ago from our medical missionary work in Haiti. I go with a general surgery team each year on the third week of January. It's at this Hopital Sacre Coeur which is based in Milot, just south of Cap Hatien. It's considered the best hospital in the north of the country, dubbed the "Mayo Clinic of Haiti."
Mayo Clinic it's not, at 2 OR's and a grand total of 73 beds, one of the plastic surgeons office our group covers is bigger and better equipped. The equipment is old and dilapidated, while supplies are frequently not there. Usually when I go, I try and bring everything I could possibly need, as my supply chain is hundreds of miles long. What complicates matters is that our team consists of one general surgeon and two general surgery chief residents, so we can do everything, from goiters the size of grapefruits to multiple peds cases, to very sick abdominal cases. Makes it hard to plan for.
This year was a little bit different...... We were scheduled to arrive on Jan 16 and stay until the 23rd. Well as the whole world knows, everything changed on the 12th. I had a unique experience on my last trip to Haiti, and I'm going to try and document some of it on this thread. I was presented with many unique challenges, and it may lend itself to some interesting discussion(s). There's no way to do it all in one sitting, so as each day passes, I will try and recount a corresponding day related to my trip. It's taken me a few weeks to compose myself. I don't think I could have recounted it when I first came back, I wept every time I thought about it. Now I have had a little time to be removed from my experience, and can be a little more objective, a little less emotional
I am also going to also plug my organization CRUDEM, not really mine, but the organization that sponsors Sacre Coeur. They have expanded from 73 to over 450 beds in two weeks, and still need support. They are still taking patients even today, and I cringe when I think of what people are working with down there.
So this will be a little therapy for me, and a way I can get to do some good for a people who desperately need it. Maybe someone out there will catch the bug to do missionary work, and I will have done a really good thing.
Mayo Clinic it's not, at 2 OR's and a grand total of 73 beds, one of the plastic surgeons office our group covers is bigger and better equipped. The equipment is old and dilapidated, while supplies are frequently not there. Usually when I go, I try and bring everything I could possibly need, as my supply chain is hundreds of miles long. What complicates matters is that our team consists of one general surgeon and two general surgery chief residents, so we can do everything, from goiters the size of grapefruits to multiple peds cases, to very sick abdominal cases. Makes it hard to plan for.
This year was a little bit different...... We were scheduled to arrive on Jan 16 and stay until the 23rd. Well as the whole world knows, everything changed on the 12th. I had a unique experience on my last trip to Haiti, and I'm going to try and document some of it on this thread. I was presented with many unique challenges, and it may lend itself to some interesting discussion(s). There's no way to do it all in one sitting, so as each day passes, I will try and recount a corresponding day related to my trip. It's taken me a few weeks to compose myself. I don't think I could have recounted it when I first came back, I wept every time I thought about it. Now I have had a little time to be removed from my experience, and can be a little more objective, a little less emotional
I am also going to also plug my organization CRUDEM, not really mine, but the organization that sponsors Sacre Coeur. They have expanded from 73 to over 450 beds in two weeks, and still need support. They are still taking patients even today, and I cringe when I think of what people are working with down there.
So this will be a little therapy for me, and a way I can get to do some good for a people who desperately need it. Maybe someone out there will catch the bug to do missionary work, and I will have done a really good thing.
