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Some of the stories, a lot of people talk to me and say,
"How do you deal with all that you see and how do you
not get discouraged, isn't it incredibly discouraging?"
Some of the things I tell people are, yeah it is discouraging,
if you look at the whole picture.
But what I try to do is look at the person who is sitting
in front of you right now, and I encourage people to do that.
If you are looking at just the person who is in front of you
and you are concentrating on just that person,
you can make a difference in that person's life.
It's not because you'll take away the trauma
that they've gone through.
It's not because you will help them out by building them a
new home or anything that you can do in that moment.
But you can listen to their stories.
A very interesting thing I was told when I was first there was
that grief is a luxury.
In Haiti, people don't have that luxury,
especially after the earthquake when 300,000 people died
and over a million people were homeless.
Who is going to offer you the help that you get
when you are grieving.
There aren't neighbors to come over and bring you food
so you don't have to cook.
There isn't somebody to watch your kids
while you cry or you rest.
You may have lost your spouse and three of your children
and you have two children remaining.
And you need to find a way to get them shelter for tonight
and food for tonight and water for tonight.
So, you can't take time to grieve for the loss of
your husband or your other children.
You just have to move forward and find safety for those
that have survived.
He told me that for most Haitians, they just kind of
had to move on.
They weren't allowed to take time out to grieve.
So one of the things that we did in our clinic was to
offer trauma counseling after every medical consultation.
But also during the medical consultations, I encouraged
people to sit down and just ask people what happened
on the day of the earthquake.
Where were you?
Who did you lose and how where you affected because
they hadn't had the chance to tell those stories.
You could see that initially they weren't sure they were
going to tell you, but then once they started, man it just poured
out of them because they were so in need of telling people how
hurt they were and how saddened they were with what happened.
So, we were able to offer the services of just listening
and holding somebody's hand.
Letting them know that we cared, which was a great service
that we were able to offer.
It wasn't just the medical care that we were giving, but
we were also offering emotional and spiritual care as well.
One of the stories, I think, that touched me the most
that I will share with you.
Over the time that I was in Haiti was of a young woman who
when we were I was doing the triage moments, where I had to
go through a long line of people and find the patients that were
the most ill, find the patients that had to be seen that day.
I met this young woman who was about 20 years old,
and she was carrying what looked like a newborn baby.
Because I knew that the babies tended to need more care and
they were more susceptible to disease hadn't yet had their
vaccines especially in the climate following the
earthquake, I went ahead and made sure that she was
going to be seen that day.
I finished going through the whole line of people and gave
out about 500 tickets for the day and went back and sat in
my little spot, two chairs, one chair for me and one chair for
my patient and began doing consultations again.
During that time, it was maybe a half an hour or an hour after
that, this woman came and she was the patient I was
going to see next, her baby.
So, we started talking and I noticed on the consultation card
that she had filled out that the baby's age was listed
as five months, but it was very, very small,
and in fact the weight was only 8 pounds.
And so I was sure that there was a mistake about the age of
the baby, and so I asked the mother how old this baby was
and she told me five months old.
So, then I started thinking about what else could be wrong
if the baby is this small at five months.
Then, I thought maybe it was premature.
So, I asked the mom if the baby had been premature, and she
assured me no, that it had been at least nine months.
Then, I thought maybe it's got a digestive disorder,
and it's not digesting food well.
And she told me, no, it's not that,
the baby really used to be big.
It was born at 8 pounds as a matter of fact.
And so looking at this baby who was not making eye contact
and wasn't engaging in anybody, wasn't reaching out
for anything, just lay limp, basically in his mother's arms.
It was heartbreaking for me.
I asked the mother when was the last time that
you had fed this baby milk.
And she said, oh a couple of weeks ago.
I said, how long is a couple of weeks ago?
She said at least six weeks, and it was probably much longer
than six weeks, but that was all she would admit to.
So then, when I started talking to her about
what she was feeding the baby.
Imagine, this was at that point about a month and a half
after the earthquake.
For six weeks following the earthquake or maybe even
two months after the earthquake, where was she
going to find formula?
She wasn't breastfeeding.
I had asked her why she wasn't breastfeeding,
and she said a doctor told her her milk was sour.
She had been breastfeeding initially, and then the baby
made a face one day when she was breastfeeding.
In Haiti, they were told that when the baby makes a face like
that that means that he doesn't like your milk and its is sour.
So, she stopped breastfeeding.
So because of that, she was unable to nourish this baby.
She did tell me that she had been giving the baby carrot
juice and mashed bananas when she could find them,
but mostly just carrot juice.
I guess it was very cheap, but even still
she had to pay for it.
I asked her how she was paying for it.
She made a comment, she didn't say anything.
She just kind of stared at the ground, embarrassed.
When I talked to her about how she could get food,
she said she couldn't stand in line.
She said, she couldn't hold this baby in her arms and stand in
line in the sun all day, waiting for
USAID relieff workers to give her a bag of rice.
And she just couldn't keep the baby out there that long.
So, we talked about, we talked to all of the Americans
who were doing consultations, and we said one of the
important things to is not to cry with your patient.
See they need to see hope.
They need to see that their life can be a little bit better, that
maybe their circumstances around them cannot, but their hope
for the future, and they need to trust in that.
That was part of the spiritual relief we were able to offer
people, but beyond that just to listen to their stories.
She had let me know that her husband had died
and her entire family had died and she was left alone
with this baby living in this tent camp.
It was really difficult not to cry with her.
My heart was breaking watching her and knowing
what she had gone through.
I can't even imagine what it would be like for a mother with
a five month old baby knowing you can't feed your baby, trying
to do what you can to scrounge around for any food to give that
child, but watching them just wither away every day.
So I ran off to the pharmacy and found out that a team
the week before had been able to give us a lot of formula.
So I was able to get her a case of formula, as I told her story
to others at the pharmacy, they threw in granola bars and
power bars, and gatorade, and anything they could think of
to give to this woman to take home with her
so she would have food herself.
As I brought the box back to her, I passed a pastor
and I asked this pastor to sit and pray with her
after we were done.
She agreed to do that.
Then, I gave the food to the woman.
But I realized that she couldn't carry the baby
and the box of food.
So I asked her if she had come with anybody.
She said no.
I asked her if there was a way that she could get
the box of food and the baby home.
She said she would try, but she got up very quickly and ran back
to the line of people who hadn't gotten tickets that day,
and she made a bargain with one woman.
She bartered with this woman.
The woman agreed to carry the baby back to the tent,
if she could get one can of formula.
It was that important to her.
And so she found somebody who would carry the baby
and then she carried the box of food.
I never saw her again.
I have no idea if the baby survived.
I don't know if this woman survived.
That's pretty much the nature of the work that I do.
You have to trust that you've done all you can in this moment.
One thing that I try to tell people who come and work for me,
whether they are nurses or doctors or students is that you
do what you can, with what you've got in this moment.
I think it was originally said by Winston Churchill.
You do all that you can right now.
You can lose your moment that you have to do any good if you
are worried about all the things you wish you had.
If I had this, I could do more.
If I had these skills I could do more.
So, you lose your moments.
If you take the moment that you have and understand
what it is you have to give, whether it is your skills
or the supplies you've brought.
Sometimes it's just holding somebody's hand, listening to
their stories and being an ear.
Those things are what will change the world.
All the money in the world, building the best schools,
building the best hospitals don't change the world.
It's the relationships we build with people and that means
taking time and sitting and acknowledging that person
in that moment right in front of you.
I would really encourage you, I know as nurses
there is so much work to be done, especially if you are a
floor nurse in a hospital.
Man, your life can be crazy, but it's those relationships
you build that will change your life and the lives
of people around you.
So take time to get to know people.
And take time to hear their stories and know where
they are coming from.
Don't assume that a grouchy patient or a cranky person
is just that way.
They may have really had some tough times
and may be that way for a reason.
They just maybe need somebody to let them know
that life could be better tomorrow.
So, we worked with several teams.
Teams came in from all different agencies.
Samaritan's Purse sent us teams.
American Baptist Churches sent us teams.
The Cooperative Baptist sent us teams.
We also had teams from different universities.
The University of Massachusetts was able to send teams down
on a regular basis.
Brown University, Yale University, so we had
a lot of cooperation with universities and churches
in the United States to get the work done.
One of the things we found is that a lot of teams wanted
to work with us because we were getting it done they said.
We were able to get into the tent camps and to work.
But as of the first of May, we were no longer able
to get back in.
We were facing the problems that many other teams faced in that
the Haitian government was no longer allowing volunteers to
come in, especially large relief efforts like we were doing.
They said we were hurting their economy and so they said
no longer would they allow in free medical supplies
and free medical care.
As of the beginning of May, we had to stop taking in
medical trips, medical teams to Haiti to offer relief work,
and also we had to stop taking in free food.
I will be heading back to Haiti the first of December
and spending about a week there, trying to find a community
that is really interested in partnering with us to work
and continue the medical care.
We are also working on microeconomIc projects
that we can do.
I think they are doing some microloans
in one of the communities that we are going to go into.
Potentially, we may find a way to be able to use our skills
and benefit the community more than just us pouring in
supplies and people to their community.
They'll come up with a project that will be long lasting
and life changing for everybody.
So, that's the goal in the December trip.
I'd like to encourage anybody who has any interest in
travelling overseas, it will change your view of the world.
It will change your outlook on how you see people and patients
and where they come from.
You should take a trip.
Make an effort, a concerted effort, to understand
the communities that you serve and understand the diversity
and accept the diversity of the communites that you serve.
It will only help you be a better practitioner.
I also would encourage you that if you are looking at becoming
a nurse practitioner, you should.
The abilities and skills that you learn are so much,
your abilities to be able to do more with that degree.
It's not so much, oftentimes at least for me it wasn't that
I learned so many new things, but I began to understand why
I was doing what I already knew how to do.
Beyond that, I also found that there was an independence
and there was a respect that was gained by the medical community
even for what I was doing when I was at the level of
a nurse practitioner.
I would really encourage folks to do that.
I guess that's probably about it that I have to say.
I would just really again, if you have any questions please
contact the Nursing Department and find out how you can help.
If they need to ask me, they can contact me and we can find out
how to bring students down to work with me.
Maybe potentially you guys can start your own trips.
But don't forget about the abilities of a nurse
is not just to provide or offer medical care or medical relief,
but you are also able to provide lots of things
that involve social services and listening to people
and hearing them and offering that kind of solace that
other people in other professions aren't able to do.
That is such a blessing to offer in this world.
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