HAITI

I have 2 AMAZING neighbors who are in Haiti. And, their families are AMAZING to be brave enough to have their husband and father travel to Haiti. One is a doctor and the other is a translator. They just sent this e-mail updating the recovery efforts they are making. They are at an LDS church in Leogane and are helping there. We are so BLESSED!


We are in Leogane. We went to Jacmel first and landed with at least 12 - 15 other doctors from Houston with more expected soon. We had heard that there were a lot of problems in Leogane without a lot of doctors and Chuck's dreams were answered. Chuck was Branch President here 20 years ago. My best guess is that we treated around 30 people today. Each individual needed procedures - fractures, dislocations, head trauma (including a sweet little girl who is a member of the church - 8 years old - with exposed bone and infections all over her head).

There were a number of individuals whose infection was beyond our treatment level and needed immediate surgery (amputation) but we cannot do anything other than clean and give antibiotics and pain meds. Everyone we saw needed a lot of help. We are setup right in the LDS Chapel here in Leogane. I think there are probably 200+ people living here in the chapel - right now we are in the same room where we did all the work today, it is the chapel and multi-purpose room. There are 20 kids/people watching a church movie on a TV. There are two or three families asleep in the middle of the room and there are a bunch of people milling around - thats just in here. There are at least 100+ sleeping out in the front area or parking lot. We just had dinner - they made us rice and beans with chicken sauce!!! We are going to sleep in the Sunday School room where they put up drapes and mattresses.

Flying over Port-au-Prince and Jacmel and Carrefour and Leogane was tough. There were a lot of really pancaked houses and there were tons of people displaced. The sad thing is, it didn't look that different except the really affected houses, etc. These people have endured so much, we were all on the verge of tears so many times today - seeing the kids was especially hard. There was even a 3 month old that Chuck put a cast on his right ankle which was broken - this is almost one week after his house fell on him and busted it!!!