Kate is Home and Shell shocked

My sister and about 15 others went back to Haiti for a week. Kate had been 3 times before to a sleepy little 70 bed hospital that got by on nothing and had a closet the nuns fondly referred to as "Junk for Jesus".

This time was different. Kate arrived home after her third visit 2 days before the earthquake hit Port Au Prince. In the ensuing month since then her sleepy little hospital and town have become the only functioning hospital in the country.

In Port Au Prince:
all 3 medical schools are gone, and all the rising doctors in it, the whole next generation of doctors......gone.
both hospitals gone, and all the nurses, and doctors in it, gone.
the only cardiologist in the country died in the hospital collapse, gone.
the only thoracic surgeon died in the hospital collapse, gone.

all clinics are gone

Families separated, homes gone, no water, no electricity, no clothes, no plumbing.


In Kate's little hospital they have gone from 70 beds to 400. A tent city of cots pressed side to side with patients trying to recover from the loss of their lives. They use buckets for a toliet and a caretaker dumps the contents out the back of the tents. They cannot get the patients to go back to Port Au prince, because they have no where to go home to. And their entire family is gone.
The community of patients has become a new community of survivors. They are one and do not want to leave one another, and yet there are still more who need help.

There is a children's tent. The ones whose parents are gone. The ones who escaped with a limb gone, and don't know they can stand on one leg and get strong again.
Kate went to that tent after putting in 10 hour days to dance with the children, to show them they could stand, they could walk with crutches, they could go on.
They were clinging to their own washcloths. That is all they have. One little girl of 10 was amazed with the perspiration on her face, and SHE wiped the sweat from Kate's face (with her own precious washcloth, and the one arm she still had to use) and wanted her to be her new mother.

There are so many wounds that need to be closed to prevent the infection from taking over. Two teams worked 5 days solid just to close wounds that would otherwise take a life. Kate closed wounds with just an anesthesiologist. Just to save a life, to give them hope.

A 17 year old boy who lost his whole family in Port Au Prince was going to sleep said: I am not ready to die. I do not want to meet my family this way. He had an infected fracture in his head. The team removed the infected bone and gave him hope and a reason to live.

A 3 month old girl was found under the crushed bodies of her mother and father. She had a wound on her buttocks that needed to be closed to heal so she could become the only daughter to her Aunt who was childless and now had a daughter from the heroic deeds of her sister and brother-in-law.

The need is so great there.
They have so little, and are doing so well.
My heart aches for the Haitian country.

Kate goes back in June. I think I'll clean out my closets and send more. Surely I can do with less.