HARD LESSONS IN HAITI

Lynn Byers is a nurse working on a medical mission at Adventiste Hospital in Port-au-Prince.  She is a member of my congregation and has extended her stay until September (she arrived September 2010). Many of us follow her blog MISSIONARY NURSE HAITI for a personal look at what is happening in that nation.  Here is a post typical of what she is sharing. - Steve

 

31 Jan 11 (2220)

Lord, life is so short & our lives can be taken away at any moment. This past week has taught me that. We had another patient die today. He was the 55 year old quadriplegic patient I explained earlier. He was in a motorcycle accident on December 25^th. He was seen by a hospital, but sent home. They brought him here January 19^th in hopes of doing surgery on his neck. They decided he didn't need surgically stabilized; that it would just heal by a brace. In the meantime, he came in with a huge pressure sore (bed sore) on his coccyx (it was all covered with eschar). We were just doing a wet-to-dry dressing, but then he started spiking temps that they couldn't find infection anywhere else & it started draining foul smelling green drainage. So they debrided it 2 times in the OR and it was fine. Today, around noon, we changed the wound vac at the bedside and the wound looked good (no signs of infection. It was deep stage IV down to the bone). But his vital signs were good that morning and for the last 3 days. I reemphasized that the patient will never walk again because his nerve had been damaged and that can't be fixed. I told him & his family no matter how the bone is fixed (by surgery or by brace), that won't make him walk again. Because they were thinking of taking him to another country to get the bone surgery, so I think this was the first time they actually understood why he could never walk again. No more than 30 minutes later, his family found me downstairs to tell me he's not breathing. I got the doctor up there & gave him an ampu bag while I ran to look for other supplies. I ran around for 10 minutes (because nothing is organized here) but the minute I got back up, the anesthesiologist pronounced him dead. They had all the intubation supplies there but it was too late. Everything just happened so fast, I didn't know what to think. I had never seen anything like that. Someone who was stable, just stop breathing. They think he either died of a pulmonary embolism (a blood clot stuck in his lung) or his neck got turned the wrong way & the nerve that controls the diaphragm was injured. I think it hit me so hard because I had just interacted with him and changed his dressing.

Some of the translators were saying that this patient had told them he couldn't live like this anymore. It was a lesson to me, when I give really bad news, that I should offer to pray with the patient after wards. We can't wait because we don't know, they could die anytime after. It was a hard lesson for me and we did pray with the family after he passed, but we never can bring back the chance to do it beforehand. When I was taking out his foley & wound vac, I had the son help me turn the body, but his son asked to leave because he didn't want to see the wound again. All I could do was give his sons a hug because I had spent time with his family & gotten to know them. After the family left with his body (it's the families responsibility in Haiti to take the body in whatever transportation they can find, including the tap-taps), I found a letter under the head of his bed. I asked Orphee to tell me what it said. She said it was a prayer, but not to God. She made me throw it away right away because I think it was some type of voo-doo saying. The patient's pastor did come & pray with them, but I've heard a lot of people practice Voo-doo while claiming to follow Christ. So, all I can do is lift up with family in prayer to God, our rock & redeemer.