another story

I don´t want to tell the whole story of what happened here last Tuesday, since I don´t know how much of this story I am permitted to recount. But I will give the basics and the occurrences after the event.

Eight days ago, during triage, we let a woman into the clinic and, while we were finishing triage, (which typically takes 45 minutes to an hour to do a brief once-over of all the children and adults) someone came outside and said one of the patients died inside. The doctors and I, of course, ran inside and found that, indeed, a woman had died. We all agree that she most likely had some serious health problems already; she was 26, but could have passed for 14, which is a major indicator of a long-standing illness. She may have had AIDS, she may have had a congenital problem, she may have had developmental delays. Whatever the problem, she died inside the walls of the clinic, without a doctor present. This is where the problems started for us.

The doctors are here with America Solidaria and this organization wanted to take this opportunity to readjust how it was operating at the clinic, so they pulled the doctors out of the clinic for the rest of the week, and so far all of this week. Last week, I also had two days off, since I find it very difficult to do my job without the doctors around. Friday, I let in patients for wound cleaning and blood pressure checks, since I can do that, for the vast majority, without the necessity of doctors or medications. This week, only one day with patients, and yesterday and today, we did inventory (which, I feel compelled to say, is probably the best thing we could have done with this obligatory ´free time´. We are finding medications that expired two, three, four years ago and I laughed when I found SteriStrips that had an expiration date of 1983. Where they came from, we can only imagine. The clinic opened in 1998, FYI). Tomorrow, if all goes as planned, the doctors will be back and can do consultations with patients again.

I don´t want this to be the only story for this post, since it seems so dreary to me. Last weekend was a welcome break, with the clinic being re-shuffled. I was invited by Carlos, one of the seminarians living here, to go to the beach with Father Edison and the rest of the students here on the compound. It is a public beach very near Port-au-Prince, only about an hour drive away (it´s probably only two or three miles, but the roads are indescribable, except to say that you never want to go more than 30 or 40 miles an hour, the potholes are sometimes hard to see. Once we got up to 65 and I felt like I was in a stowaway in a NASCAR race). It was a beautiful beach, with the expected palm trees and salty water (something which stupidly surprised me, since all oceans are salty. But in Oregon, I don´t often get wet above my knees, thus forget the taste of salty seas.), but also scrawny chickens, empty bottles floating from the beach, Bob Marley blaring from pathetic speakers, and gawking passers-by. Not many blans visit this beach, I assume. And here´s Carlos, Father Edison, and me in our swimsuits. We kind of stand out. We swim for a while, eat the rice, chicken, sandwiches, coleslaw-sort-of-thing, and King Cola, I play a very poor game of checkers with Telo, read a few pages of our chosen books, try to nap in the shade (although it´s tough, there isn´t sand, just big smooth rocks, and the sun still finds its way through the pam fronds), and generally relax and enjoy the beautiful holiday at the beach. After a few hours, we drive home, with all of us trying to sleep without bashing our heads on the ceiling or the windows when we go over the massive bumps in the road. When I get back to my room, I discover I have managed to get another sunburn (on my legs this time, not as bad as the shoulders and face like last weekend), and I take a much-needed nap.

I ended with a happy story and I am satisfied. I will write again when something else happens. Or when I manage to make fried plantains.