Another cholera victim...

    This patient was a 19 year old male who came to the clinic with cholera. He was pretty bad off when he got to us. I couldn't get a thermometer to register a temperature because he was so cold. His blood pressure wouldn't take on the machine either and I didn't take time to take it manually. We started two IV's and started getting fluid in as fast as we could. By the time he had three liters of IVF's in he was able to talk to us. After another liter and then a liter or two of oral rehydration he was feeling much better and was ready to go home. He was still very weak but no longer having the massive amounts of vomiting and diarrhea.
     The weekend before last was the time for babies to be born. On Saturday a lady who is deaf and dumb came to the clinic and had a baby. Then on Sunday Mirlene and I left after hearing maybe 10 minutes of the sermon because there was another lady in labor. Then early Monday morning Keith got a call that another lady was coming in in labor. They got to the clinic about 4am and we knew right away that there were problems. First off, this mom was not big at all so we asked if she was at nine months. No, she was only seven months along but already had 10 children. Then I couldn't find the baby's heartbeat. And when I checked her I couldn't feel a head. But she was bleeding quite a bit. So we decided she needed to go down to a hospital in Port. Keith decided he would take her in our machine and so headed down about 5:30. I went back to bed and got another hour of sleep until Keith called me and said " this lady just delivered something, I'm not sure if it's a baby or what" So he turned around and brought them back to the clinic. It still wasn't time to open but I got our Haitian nurse to come too as she knows more about all this birthing stuff than I do. She had delivered a perfectly formed little boy. He wasn't alive. There was also no amniotic fluid at all. Then we found out she had been bleeding throughout this whole pregnancy but had only been to the clinic once. The funny thing was when our Haitian nurse told the dad " if you want to have fifty children you need to find another madam, this one has had enough" We kept the mom at the clinic a while longer and gave her some more IVF's. At about 10:00 another lady came in in labor. This was going to be her third child. She was getting close but we didn't think anything would happen for at least twenty minutes so Mirlene and I went to see some other patients. We left Sonia in with this lady. She was to call us when things got closer. It wasn't even five minutes later when we hear a rather panicky yell for us to come. We went right away but when we got to the room the baby was already born and trying its best to holler at us. So we sent these two ladies home at almost the same time.
   On Tuesday I went down to Port with Keith because my family came! It was wonderful to see them all again. We also took a lady who has HIV down to a hospital. The third hospital we went to accepted her. One of the others had no empty beds and the other wasn't accepting patients because they didn't have any doctors there that day. It was some kind of holiday - festival of flowers- so lots of places were closed. We hadn't even known it was a holiday. We had almost everything done in Port that we could do with so many places closed so after we finished at the airport we had only one more stop before we headed up the mountain. On Saturday we all went to the market in Foret-de-pins then headed down to the beach in Grand Gosier. It was an absolutely beautiful day.  We stopped in Thiottes for rice and beans for lunch then set up a time we would come to another little restaurant nearby for supper. We had a very good time in the water then washed up at the cold springs there. Then to get back to the vehicle we had to walk along the beach a ways. One place there are some pretty big rocks you have to climb over and sometimes we get wet from the waves washing up against the rocks. Anthony got slapped down by a wave twice trying to get by but made it on the third time. The waves seemed to be getting bigger and numerous of us got salty again.
     I had had a sore throat for a couple of days but yesterday it was even worse so I did a strep test and it was positive. Then my one ear was really hurting so Todd looked in it and I have an ear infection too.  So now I'm on a bunch of medication hoping to feel better soon.  My family left this morning. I don't think Anthony and Shelly will ever forget their Haiti visit.