Blood and guts, Part 2

Our second day at the clinic went just as well as the first. In fact, it was better because it was cooler out. (For me, having lived here for several months, it feels ridiculously cool right now, but for the rest of the team, it's really hot.) We had girls working side-by-side with Haitian nurses, stitching head wounds, doing prenatal exams, giving shots, prescribing drugs, even getting pooped and pee-ed upon. One man had a leg wound with maggots in it; another came in with malaria, sick to the point of not being able to walk; a little boy arrived with a slice in the back of his head where his mother had "punished" him with a knife for not keeping the fire going; a woman had three holes in her foot where she had fallen on rocks; and one little girl was in the early stages of kwashikor, a form of starvation where the body swells and the skin starts to fall off due to lack of protein. My team continues to pick up essential Creole vocabulary - they used to only be able to say, "Bonjou" and "Kikote Keziah?" (Where's Keziah?) but now they can list off a wide variety of maladies from fyev (fever) to dyare (diarrhea) to doule senti (back pain) to my favorite: infeksyon pipi (urinary infection). They are all tired from the heat and the constant contact with people, but they are in good spirits.

Tomorrow I am leading devotions for the clinic staff and then we'll have our last day of work. Some of the jobs can get very monotonous (taking blood pressures, doing weights, or filling tiny plastic bags with pills), so I am trying to rotate them frequently into the more exciting places like general consult and the ER. On Friday morning, we will head back to Port-au-Prince and the orphanage. I can't wait. This has been a fantastic stay and I would seriously consider coming back here long term, but I miss my kids. It really is difficult to be in Haiti and to not be with them.

Thanks to everyone that has been praying for us! Our suitcases arrived yesterday evening, no one is seriously ill (we have one case of very itchy bug bites and a little diarrhea but otherwise nothing), and we are learning more than a nursing student usually learns in a whole semester. God is good!