3/2/2010 - Team 6, Day 3

Update compiled by Kristen Damery, PT from Team 6 members:

Our communication has been sparse secondary to a spotty connection with email and phones. We are all safe and busy! We are all going to contribute tonight!

Anesthesia system is pretty complete and we are able to take care of everything we need.
-Dr. Dave, Anesthesiologist

Ambulance needs some air conditioning! To his family, he misses you and is safe. Everyone is really great and a really good bunch of people to work with. I just hope my wife doesn’t have too much snow to shovel!
-Rick, medic

-Experience of a lifetime. Misses her family but not the snow.
-Denise, nurse

Can’t believe how great the OR team is. Met Dr. Greg, a retired thoracic surgeon, still demonstrating great surgical skills, a tremendous help. Have a new X-ray tech named Wicky (Haitian). Injuries are bad, we are able to help some but not all. Tomorrow morning we are doing wound cases and Haiti 1 is going to pick up fractures for tomorrow afternoon.
-Dr. Brad, orthopedic surgeon

Haiti one had a mishap in route yesterday, apparently the local population doesn’t recognize an ambulance.
-Pauline, medic

Very unique and rewarding experience. We have a great team that gets along together and works well except there are too many Texans. Haven’t been able to do any coronary bypasses yet, the TSA wouldn’t let me bring my bypass pump on the plane!
-Dr. Greg (cardiovascular surgeon form Chapel team)

Finally finding where everything is at in the OR. Have dish pan hands from washing instruments.
-Jeff, orthopedic tech

I really enjoyed working with Dawn from the Chapel team in post-op today. She is great to work with and we are thankful for the teams from Indiana and Canada (although we try not to talk about recent international hockey games). Despite searching very hard for a fax machine I was unable to locate one to fax the order to the pharmacy prior to giving meds. This was a huge bummer…NOT. Actually it is great to focus on patient care and being with the people here, they are very grateful and fun to be around. I also enjoy the random turkeys and goats that walk by the clinic. One baby goat actually walked in the clinic but we could not see anything medically wrong with it so we shooed it away.
-Eric, nurse

Today was a slower day for wound care so I was able to assist a little while in other areas which were fun to experience. Yesterday was madness, a steady stream of patients for wound care coming in all day. The Haitians were all so grateful. They are beautiful people. Our team is working well together, everyday is better than the day before. The patients are all so diverse; some are still recovering from wounds secondary to the quake. Their stories are unbelievable. They have experienced things that we can not comprehend. Miss everyone. Good things are happening here in Haiti.
-Kristen, PT

Melissa is currently working nights at the ward! What a blessing she is to the patients, unfortunately she is not here to contribute. She is an angel.
-Heidi, nurse

We had a new team from Austin today. Very happy to have them here. They are working on setting up a prosthetics clinic. When up and running many, many people will benefit from this service.