My Week in Haiti

Julie Rizco, RN, center, and Ted Reckas, right, dress a patient’s wound at a field hospital in Fond Parisien, Haiti. Inspired by the example of Laguna Beach doc Eric Siedenburg, The Indy’s intrepid reporter-photographer Ted Reckas, also a trained emergency medical technician, spent a week in quake-ravaged Haiti last month.

What follows are journal entries from his experience.

Feb 19, 10:18 p.m.

We got to Jimani, Dominican Republic, today after driving six hours from Santo Domingo. The air conditioning in our van broke after the first few hours. Countryside and towns were littered with trash, dogs, electrical wires hung low, bright signs, banana fields, concrete and rebar, like many third world countries. (Funny – a week later I would see this place as a gleaming beacon of organization and productivity after where I had been.)

Good Samaritan Hospital in Jimani, DR, is three miles from the Haitian border, a few hours outside of Port au Prince. At one point, 430 patients were here. About 200 patients filled the emergency ward when Laguna Beach doc Eric Siedenburg arrived a week after the big one. Now, five weeks later, there are only 65 patients. There is a camp just across the border with over 200 patients, many of whom need surgery we are told, but for some reason cannot make the seven-mile trip. People hesitated to discuss it, apprehensive about undefined repercussions from someone, somewhere in the halls of power. Wherever there is a story – and there are plenty here – there is someone who doesn’t want it told.

Kathy Van Dusen, RN, treats a patient outside the hospital in the main tent, where each night patients would sing spiritual songs before going to sleep. Photo: Ted Reckas. Feb 19, 10:54 p.m.

All the patients are in big tents outside the hospital. ICU patients stay inside. Each night after dinner everyone in the tents sings together, usually led by one person who pushes forward vocally as darkness settles on a camp thick with survival stories. I don’t understand the words but don’t need to; they are clearly spiritual songs. Their voices are not mournful but uplifted. Sometimes the vibe shifts and sadness seeps out, but generally the mood is overwhelmingly positive. People clap and are happy. They thank the lord repeatedly. They have lost everything but still count the things that remain as blessings. And they sing beautifully, as if they are performing for all the angels and saints.

Some of the medical staff listens at the tent opening, enchanted. The nurses go on putting in IVs, giving meds, redressing wounds by head lamp as the choir of patients sings themselves to sleep. Work as prayer.

Feb 19, 11:37 p.m.

Motorcycle accident outside the hospital. Separated shoulder and possibly a broken pelvis, but x-rays showed otherwise. Friends and family of the man showed up soon afterward. One of them stole a blood pressure machine, a large candle, some other items in plastic bags. Guards at the gate caught him. If they hadn’t, word may have gotten out, and more may have come to steal. These people are poor, and appear to be simply trying to get what they need for themselves and their families to survive. If he had sold that blood pressure machine for a fraction of its U.S. value he could have fed his family for months.

Feb 20, 11:51 p.m.

Feet killing me. Hot night. Flies and things buzzed around the light. Sat on the porch and talked with Doug, a banker from northern California, here to help with his daughter, a nurse.

Doug: “There is a young girl that had her leg amputated and I just got a smile out of her for the first time in a week. I think she would rather have died. You and I would think, ‘Thank god, they got the gangrene as early as they did, and it didn’t get worse. I’m still alive.’ But they look at it like a death sentence. Back in the States, we would know we have a great prosthesis coming and, for me, I like to run a lot and I would probably have some great titanium thing that would make me run faster and jump higher. Not here. They don’t have anything. It’s tough shit, take care of yourself.”

He’s right. Everyone’s so focused on pulling someone from the rubble – the hero shot. I hadn’t thought of what comes next. There is no disability pay, or social security, or unemployment benefits here. If you have an amputation in a country that depends overwhelmingly on physical laborbased jobs, you are unemployable. You’re going to starve.

Feb 22, 12:23 a.m.

Went to Haiti today. Reminded me of being a kid in Spain and my dad telling me, “whatever you do, don’t go to Morocco!” While in the DR, Haiti had the same type of mystique: mysterious, a little risky, chaotic. Even before the quake. In reality it was a countryside filled with poor people in need.

We went to Love A Child field hospital, run by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. I was assigned to rows three and four in the tent city, doing dressing changes. Major wounds need to be cleaned and redressed at least once a day. With over 200 patients – some with several wounds each – that’s a lot of work. I was with Julie Rizco, RN, Jill Carrington, RN.

I felt a little lame at first. Hadn’t dressed a wound since some kid cut his foot last fall surfing Doheny. After a few patients, I got rolling. Julie showed me how to do a wet to dry dressing, for the deeper wounds. Also helping was Sheryl Faulk, our chaplain, there to provide emotional and spiritual support. Every bit as important as a surgeon. When she was here yesterday a woman needed to be flown out to the USNS Comfort for a procedure they were not equipped to do at the field hospital. As the Black Hawk approached, she was worried about losing her limb because she didn’t understand the doctor, a Canadian who spoke French but not Creole. Sheryl spoke with the doctor about the anxiety she realized many of the people were experiencing as they opened up to her. They had lost their homes, family members, and had horrible injuries. They were alone and had been moved from camp to camp, new people buzzing all around. The physician said, “I’m glad you’re here. They would never communicate that to me as a physician.”

They found an interpreter, communicated to the woman that there was no plan to amputate her leg. They were actually going to save it.

Sheryl: “She starts crying. Gives me a big hug. Her husband gives me a big hug. And she asks me if I can go with her. I said I can’t go but my heart goes with you and my prayers go with you. They asked if I would carry the gurney over, so I went all the way to the helicopter. The propellers were still moving.”

Part 2 next week.