I love you, L'hopital General

Hurricane Tomas, we're waiting for you. Prepping for the hurricane, that's probably only going to be a tropical storm when it hits us, and per history, doesn't really ever rock PAP because of the protection of the southern moutnains, or so we're told. In light of that, we're hoping that the 1.3 million people living in tents right now are going to be OK tonight. In preparation for the storm, we had to dismantle the TB tents (7 tents, 65 patients) and move all of the patients into an an abandoned ward in the hospital that was deemed structurally flawed after the earthquake, but has now been repaired to some extent, or so it seems. I guess it hasn't fallen down in 10 months and there is evidence of some cement work done on the 1st floor... Well, lots of politics involved in the hospital, which I would love to talk about, but will refrain. The patients that are still inpatient with us are likely to be safe. We have enough 02 so if the power goes out, we can be OK without the concentrators and just run tanks. Some of our friends, including MMRC folks (and some very nice visiting executives/prospective sponsors), came down and tarped the windows and scrubbed the floors for us, and then 2 nurses, 2 docs, and all of the patient families moved 30 beds, gear, meds, IV poles, 02 and concentrators, etc all into the new building, and then carried all of the patients inside last night at 10pm. Hoping the storm passes quickly so we can safely get into work tomorrow AM and make sure everyone is fine.

I hopefully will start recording some of the stories of some of our lovely patients....

Davo comes to Haiti

So, the first Dave-Rachel team works in Haiti. Davo came down last wednesday to be our "physical therapist" and just give us a hand in general. He was a champ, working with some of our most deconditioned patients, working on getting these patients, many of whom had been bedridden for months, to start sitting, standing, and walking again. Some of the younger girls in the 1st tents were so excited (either by dave or his hair) that the entire tent wanted to work with him. His first several patients really didn't want to work, complained about pain, complained they were too weak, didn't really get the idea that he was trying to push them to get them better. Soon after his first sessions with people though, they were totally exhausted, but begging to work with him the next day. He was doing abs, bridges, bicycles, and other work with people to get them back to a place where they can more confidently stand and walk. Most of these guys still need a lot of work, but now I can tell them I'm going to report to Dave on whether or not they are doing their exercises.

Most significantly, Dave stepped up to the plate to really save a life. Megan's 40 something patient with renal failure of unknown etiology has been surviving for 2 months now on dialysis and is finally being discharged from the hospital. He has been pretty anemic and for some unknown reason (and maybe the fact they don't do EPO here) his blood count keeps dropping . Well, he came to us saying that his Hgb was 4.0 (normal is 10+) and that they couldn't dialyze him unless he got 2 units of blood because otherwise 1/2 of his blood would be in the machine at any time. He was already feeling sick since he was supposed to be dialyzed the day before. Well, as usual the Red Cross was out of blood except AB+, and what they usually require is that the sick person bring 2 family members to donate for each unit that they need. But, this poor guy only had young children, no wife, so no one to donate for him. Luckily, Dave, being O- , stepped up to the plate, went right down there, and gave blood for him.

And to celebrate his 28th birthday, I then whisked him off to Cote Arcadins, about 1.5hrs north of PAP, for a little beach weekend. After working 18 days straight (hard to complain about when Megan Coffee works every day) it was nice to just sit on the beach and do absolutely nothing with my favorite partner in crime by my side. A little swimming, a little sun, a little rum punch.... now back to reality.