1 of 5

Tour 3

In just fifteen minutes I'll be boarding a plane to Haiti. This is going to be my third time flying into Haiti and yet still I feel a bit uneasy. This time is already much different than the last two times. The first time, I was full of anxiety and excitement. I was with my friend Chris and we were both just so excited to be sharing such an incredible adventure together. We were nervous, but we were together. Neither of us had a clue of what to expect and there's no way I thought I'd be staying as long as I did and then returning back for a third time.

The second time was lonely. I sat in the airport eager to be either back at home with family and friends or in Haiti. The anxiety was unreal as I returned the second time. Maybe it was because I wasn't sure I had a ride from the airport. Maybe because I had just committed to something huge and real and scary. Maybe it was because it was one of the first times I have felt so alive and full in a long long time. I wasn't sure I was making the "right" decision but I was positive it wasn't wrong.

So now I sit here in San Francisco International Airport. Enough time to enjoy a beer. So many good days with my family and friends behind me and uncertain days ahead. I don't really like to admit fear, so I usually just pretend like it doesn't even exist with me. Even at dinner tonight with my mom, the server asked if I had the Al Capone syndrome, needing to see the front door at all times. I responded with, "I'm not scared of no one" and sat with my back to the door.

Spending time with my little niece Chloe has been revealing as well. She's fearless. She walks off the couch not knowing if anyone is going to catch her. She doesn't care. She walks up to dogs triple her size and hit/pets them. Not a worry in sight. She's bold, she's fearless, she's confident. She waves at strangers like they're family; doesn't care that they're not. Why is this all revealing? There's been numerous times my mom has called me fearless and even more now that Chloe is around. They say I was just like her when I was her size. Never scared of anything. Ran into the lake cause my brothers doing it...never mind that I didn't know how to swim and was only 3. I didn't cry when I broke my arm in half. No tears when I lost my mom at Disneyland only to find her worried out of her mind once she found me. I had walked up to a strange man and asked him to help me find my mom. I had lost her, I said. He did. We found her. I frequently walked up to little kids on the playground to ask if they wanted to be my friend. No, not play with me, be- my- friend. Let's just cut to the chase right?

So anyways, I wish I was as fearless as I used to be. I wish I didn't have butterflies in my stomach and that I was just bold and confident and well, I'm not. Hopefully that makes it more real and worthwhile. I mean, the sun doesn't shine as bright without the rain right?

All this to say, thanks to you all... my family, my friends. I'm far more confident than I would be alone. So thank you again. I love you all. If you pray, please pray. If you send energy full of love and peace, please do that. If you just think about me, I'd love that too.

I could never do this without your gracious loving words and thoughts. Meci. Meci anpil.

christina

fini

It's all over. My reason for coming to Haiti has now closed down and I'm out of a job. We were told at a Thursday morning meeting that the hospital would be closing on Saturday afternoon. We all knew it would close eventually and initially the end of July was thrown around as an option but nothing ever seemed set in stone because other much later dates were also thrown around. The meeting was short and quick but terribly sad. I almost lost it a couple of times but as I looked around, everyone was stoic. No one looked like they were truly upset or at any kind of loss for what to do next. It was strange. I mean I know they were but they definitely didn't show it.

Afterwards, I was talking to a couple of them and I asked them what they would do now. None of them had a clue of what to do. Not a clue. Some of the people that work at the hospital are skilled. Some are nurses, they'll hopefully be able to find jobs eventually. The translators will also be okay seeing that there's so many NGO's out here needing translating skills. My problem is with Manouschka. She cleans our hospital washes our sheets makes our beds mops the floors and she's gonna have a shitty shitty time finding a job now. She also happens to be a single mother taking care of Jonas and a few months ago she decided to start taking care of Williamson full time. Williamson has had my heart since the moment I met him. He was abandoned 3 years ago and only since staying with Jonas and Manouschka does he seem happy and alive and like a little boy. He has one of the most generous hearts I've ever met. He's offered me food when he's obviously limited in what he has, he's split candy with me, he's taken food that was gifted to him and split it with Jonas before Jonas even had a chance to ask for it. He's incredible. Anyways, Manouschka and the boys have been living in a tent behind the hospital for a while now. From what I can understand she doesn't have a slab to live on but she has a tent and a space to put it for a while. She's staying with a friend for a while because she's no longer allowed to live on the property but obviously, none of these options are sustainable for her right now. Before I left, I gave her number to one of the people at HODR to possible help her get her name on a list for some temporary shelter. Regardless, it's tough to be in Haiti seeking shelter during a tropical thunder storm and not think of that family.

Another family I love is Natascha and Emily. Emily was abandoned the day after her mom gave birth to her at our hospital. Mom said she had to go to the bathroom so she went outside and just never came back. Emily was born 2 months early and had respiratory issues from the beginning. It's a miracle she lived at all seeing that there had to be shifts of people helping her breathe through the first night she was alive. Natascha lives with her two brothers mom and Emily in a teeny tiny house/tent. Their house has some structural damage and since they're scared to sleep in the house they made a tent thing attached to it. She was the primary income for that house and now she's unemployed. I asked her if she's looked for work elsewhere and she said yes but nowhere is hiring right now.

Most of the people who worked at the hospital help support their families and although some have saved money, when you get paid $10 a day, I'm sure it's hard to be hopeful about the future of your family.

As I walked home from the hospital on Saturday afternoon I was stopped by a bunch of people. A couple of the women who live on the street gave me beautiful gifts to say thanks for all I had done. Another couple of women stopped me to ask me if it was true that the hospital was fini. I had to say yes. They responded with,

"Christina, what are we going to do now?" I said I don't know. I said try other clinics. I said I'm so so sorry. It was awful. It was so sad.

So there you go. I can't explain this sadness to you. I wont say this to brag at all but I've been at that hospital more consistently than anyone else. I spend 3 months of my life pouring my heart and soul into loving and healing patients. 3 months of seeing sick babies and sick women and dying old men and cut up little boys. 3 months of learning Creole and sewing up wounds and smiling at malnourished children. It was my heart and soul and I called it home.

I was supposed to stay until October and yet I fear my trip has been cut short. I'm heading home right now to surprise my brother and spend time with my family. This vacation was only supposed to last 2 weeks but now it may be permanent. I don't know where I'll end up next but I know that these next 2 weeks are essential to restoring my soul. My heart has been ripped to shreds by my time in Haiti and so being home with family is the only thing that I wanna do.

I'll update again when I have a better idea of what my life will look like for the next few months. I'm sure it will be glorious and I'm sure it will be exactly what my soul needs but for right now I feel a little lost and without much direction.

Orphanage

Oh man. What a tough week. These days have tested my hearts ability to love and my ability to hold myself together in the face of sadness.

HODR has a couple of orphanages they go to during the week and Wednesday morning was "baby orphanage day." All of the kids are under 7 years old and live in the same two bedroom house. There's 30 kids and three staff members. I've been planning on going over for the last couple of weeks because the girl that leads the team keeps telling me how sick all the kids always are. Wednesday was my day to go. I got together with Amanda, a 3rd year med student, we packed a box full of meds and bandages and got ready to head over. As we jumped in the back of a "tap- tap" (basically a pickup truck with seats in the back) I started to think about where we were actually going. Orphanages in Haiti are filled with kids that have no parents at all or have parents that aren't able to financially support them, economic abandonment. '
We pull up and as we go through the gate, the kids start singing a welcoming song. It immediately took me back to my time in Uganda. Singing as you came and singing as you left... the way I think everyone should be loved on. I was almost in tears just from listening to the song of 30 children then I began to look at their faces. Almost all of them had conjunctivitis. Almost all of their eyes looked like someone had rubbed vaseline and green goop all up in their beautiful eyes. And then the way they looked at you, ugh break my heart. They had this way of looking at your with these super sad puppy dog eyes. They also tried holding you and being held by you if they saw that no other child had your attention. I was completely overwhelmed. To my left I saw about 6 smaller, younger babies in crib type things. One crying, a couple sleeping, one getting picked up by a volunteer, another with its face being smothered by the side of the crib... I fixed him. It was craziness.

Long story short... Amanda and I along with Margot (a lawyer thinking about trying out something in the medical field.... I've been taking people with me to the hospital who think they might want to "try out" nursing and haven't had enough exposure to know for sure. It's been super cool. ) set up shop in one of the two rooms of the house. We brought in some chairs and just started seeing and treating little ones. We would give them all a deworming pill and a children's vitamin and the treated each like it was gold. They took each one and sucked on it to make it last as long as possible. I tried one of the vitamins later on and it tasted awful. That didn't matter to them though. They just wanted to taste something.

As we tried our best to see the kids throughly, we were constantly distracted by them coming back in trying to get more vitamins or just wanting to be check out again. We had tons of conjunctivitis that we treated with Gentamicin drops, a bunch of scabies so we rubbed Permethrin cream on almost half of those kids and changed their clothes, and then a few with what sounded like Pneumonia so we gave them Amoxicillin. One girl had a wound on her head that was covered in gnats. Another little boy had a huge abscess over his right ear that we didn't have the equipment to drain. Another little girl probably has Hepatitis but we'll never know cause we don't really have those testing capabilities. One of the first ones we saw was terribly malnourished. Marie Carmel. She is 10 months old and only about 10 pounds. Her grandma had dropped her off two days before because she couldn't take care of her anymore. We took her back to the hospital with us cause we knew she needed treatment to be re-nourished. We have a small NGO that runs out of the hospital that does that so it was perfect.

Each kid I saw looked sadder and sicker than the last. Each looked absolutely miserable and sick. Like they each just needed a mommy to hold them and sing them a song. When you would pick up the little ones they would drop their head straight onto your shoulder and nuzzle into your chest like it was the most familiar place to them. Kids back in the states would never do that. They would scream and cry and loose it if you even tried to pick them up. These poor little tikes wanted nothing more than to just be held by you and cuddled. I almost lost it several different times as I listened to lungs or handed out vitamins or just sat and snuggled with them. It's a world very few of us know and to be part of it for just a day was so moving and heartbreaking. It's another reminder to me of how and why the important things are the important things for a reason.

I came back to base and the first person I saw asked me how my day had been. It was John, he' s a 65 year old grandpa type and I felt all too comfortable telling him how sad my soul was. I was in the courtyard eating lunch and pouring tears into it. It was much needed. Another couple of friends asked me later on and I was able to process with them as well. By the time I needed to go to bed, I felt fully processed and at peace.

I got sick after that day and have been spending time on base resting and drinking gatorade. This morning though, I knew I needed to go and check up on the kids. As I walked in, I saw no eyes that looked sad and greasy. I saw kids full of energy and not miserable and smiling and ahhhhhhh.... it was such a beautiful morning. They still seek out your hand and they still want to be held but at least they're healthy and a bit happier now.

Basically.... I still love being here and can't imagine being anywhere else right now. I can't imagine letting those little ones go one more day without proper medical attention and how miserable they would have been. So another beautiful day through my epic journey of life. I can't believe this is my life. I'm so lucky. Thank you for your love and support!!

ugh day...#1

I just saw someone die.

53 years old. He had a stroke 3 days ago and they didn't have enough money to bring him to a hospital because they lived too far away. I'm not sure how they found the money to bring him today but he showed up panting in a cold sweat, mouth open eyes blank. We put him on a stretcher and got some vials. Blood pressure 198/148 Pulse 60 Temp 94 O2 saturation at 46% Respirations 28 in a Kussmaul pattern turning into Cheyne Stokes. He was going and we all knew it.

We gave him some Labetelol to bring his blood pressure down a bit. Then we couldn't find a blood pressure so we gave him Atropine. His pulse was weak peripherally and his heart was barely audible over the apex of the heart. He was sweating profusely and was super cold and clammy. Then he stopped breathing. He would still look at you but you could tell he was gone.

As he was dying, one of our docs went to find another doc to get a second opinion. I was alone with this man in the ER watching him suffer and die. I brought his wife over to ask if she wanted to be with him or hold his hand because there was nothing else we could do for him. She was stoic. No response. No emotion. Meanwhile, I'm trying to hold it together... and doing a very poor job at it. She went to get her daughter. Her daughter started making the phone calls to take care of his body after he died. They looked at him, but barely and very emotionless.

Then he went. He took his last little gasps and that was it.

I can't help but think about the trauma so many Hatians have been through and will continue to go through as they keep on living in such awful conditions.

We had a 50 year old man come in earlier in the day who had cut his hand with a machete. He hadn't eaten for days. When I asked him why, he said it was because he had no wife to cook for him, no money to buy food, and no job to get money. I had nothing else to say. I could have asked him about his wife's death but I was too scared to find out. I would love to tell him to get a job but there's no job to be had. We don't have enough money to give out food along with medical supplies. We barely have enough money to continue to run the hospital.

I'm so so so thankful for this hospital. I have to give an update every night at our meeting and I always joke about how we save lives. Its true though. So many more people would have died if it were not for this hospital. For example, Jean Claude works outside in our clinic. He's our crowd control. He brought in his daughter last week cause she was vomiting and had some awful fevers at night. The doc on at the time thought she might have had worms so gave her a quick pill and sent her off. She said she didn't want to test for malaria cause she didn't have a fever. I should have spoken up but ... I didn't. I know malaria causes your fever to spike at night and I should have said something but I didn't. Jean Claude came in the next two days saying how his daughter still wasn't better. I kept telling him to bring her back and I'll test her. He finally did and as I was doing the test, he was telling me how his wife died 8 years ago because of Malaria. Who knows if that's true but regardless, she died... and she didn't have a hospital to go to. That's when I'm so thankful. So thankful for this hospital and the opportunity to be a part of the healing that happens here on a daily basis.

I sometimes question if I can emotionally handle what this country brings to me. I forget where I am because it's so familiar now. I walk by houses that are pancakes on a daily basis and it's normal. I greet people in their shanty makeshift tent shelters and smile as I walk by. I have 2 year olds chanting Christina running at me with open arms no pants and a t shirt on. (Donaldson is one of my favorites who does this.) It feels so right to be here and so essential to keep on doing what I'm doing so I'll continue to heal and hug and kiss and smile but my heart is broken. Broken beyond what I'm able to fix and I'm not sure I'd want to.

Okay, that's the end of it. Basically, it's been a tough day. Thank you for reading my rant. I love you guys. Please remember how to live simply with compassion and remember. Remember Haiti. Remember Katrina victims. Remember what love and life are truly about. Remember to kiss and hug your family. Remember what matters.

christina

Being a doctor in Haiti.

Cayla's arm pre-stitches.

Stitching Cayla's arm.

Sweet final product!

Oh what a month!!

One month down and four more to go. It's crazy to think about but somehow this last month has held so many different emotions and so many special moments and has been quite long and terribly short all at once.
HODR is such a beautiful place to live and get to know people but they leave just as quickly as they enter. Here one day, gone the next. This last week, about 7 "really good" friends (as good of friends as you could have in a month) left to go home and start their lives back up. It's a tough transition but so beautiful to know that new different people will come and hopefully bring a different kind of richness with them.

This week has been particularly tough at the hospital because we've had such a shortage of volunteers. We had one PA and one 4th year med student both as our providers and then just 4 nurses. We had to cancel our outside clinic and just run the hospital. This would had been fine if I didn't have an awful run in with the PA. Most of the people down here are incredible. Most. This woman, from day one, was pushy and rude and very disrespectful. Being that I also have a fairly strong personality and I don't back down very easily, we clashed. She told me I walked around acting like I knew everything and really I was just in the way basically. So I gave her a little piece of my mind as well. It was all done respectfully but I guess I just couldn't believe how awful she was being to me and for no good reason. So I left the hospital to cool down a bit. I went to see Williamson to see if his presence would cheer me up. I walked up to his tent and he was outside eating plain white rice for breakfast. The first this he said was "CHRISTINA!" the second " Manje!" as he holds his bowl of rice out to me. He wanted to share his rice with me. He has nothing yet whatever is given to him is usually quickly redistributed to anyone around him. He's just so good. His soul and generosity are ridiculous. Such a healing moment right after such a damaging encounter with this grown woman. I cried a bit in front of his tent with him. He just kinda looked at me sorta funny.

As I returned to the hospital to grab my stuff a couple of good friends had shown up injured. One girl needed stitches and as we walked in the hospital, she said she'd really love a gnarly looking scar so she wouldn't mind if I did her stitched. so.... of course I did. She said I did too good of a job though. I'm totally okay with that and kinda proud of myself. Another reminder that this woman is kinda crazy and a big jerk face.

We've worked together the rest of the week and she's been civil and slightly nicer so it's been good.

Also, because we were so short on providers at the beginning of the week, we still ran the clinic and me and another nurse acted like doctors. We saw patients, asked questions, assessed, and prescribed medication. It was weird. I mean, I know a lot of the complaints were the same and fairly simple but it was super awesome knowing how much we were helping these patients. We would always consult a doctor if we were unsure and the nurse was far more experienced than I was... either way, it was incredible and terribly humbling to know these patients trusted us with their treatment and health. Basically, in Haiti, I'm half a doctor. Oh and the jerk PA woman missed a very obvious diagnosis the other day. I had the dad bring his sick daughter back in the hospital and tested her for malaria (which she had, which I knew she had, and which the PA missed cause she was being dumb about her symptoms) and she had it. It was so classic and I felt so good that that little girl is gonna finally sleep through the night without throwing up anymore. As I was talking to her dad, he had told me that his wife died 8 years ago because she wasn't treated for malaria and she had gotten so sick she died. Can you imagine? Your wife dies of malaria and your only daughter is sick for four days and gets sent home with a tums? I'm so glad he brought her back to get tested and treated. Poor little thing.

So this is long enough. Many more amazing things have happened but I'll leave those for another day.
Love you kids. miss you too. Besitos.