An earthquake, and tropical storm Grace

     Friday was my day off. Every Friday Jay works so one of the nurses can have off. Brianna and I walked to "the point" in the morning. It is a little over 2 miles one way. The view from there is just beautiful! I wish I knew how many miles we could see. You can see the coast from several different places along the route we walked. Then at the "point" itself it is an awesome view 360* around. One way is the coast, then around to quite a steep drop off down the mountain where you can see all the fields and gardens on the next mountain over. There were several small children who walked the last little ways with us. Of course they all wanted a "gift" from us. Brianna gave them the drink she had brought with her but I didn't have anything to give them. On our way back the children decided to link arms and try to block the path so we couldn't get through. I started to run toward them to try and break through and they scattered... shrieking with delight! So of course they had to try to block us several more times. Then on Friday afternoons we have worship at someone's house. I was just getting ready to leave to walk to the house where we were having the service when an "ijans" (emergency) showed up at the gate. A lady in labor... we checked her and it didn't seem like anything would happen anytime soon so I got in the machin with Jay's as they were planning to drive to the afternoon service. Chancela was on call for the weekend so she stayed at the house with the lady in labor. When we were almost to the house where the service was going to be we met a moto with several passengers. They were on their way to the clinic with a lady who had a bad headache and just didn't feel well. Jay told them they could go to the clinic on the Catholic compound here in Oriani or we would be back in a little while and could see her then. We had a service in a small two room house- there were probably 15-20 people in those 2 small rooms plus a few more outside that there weren't enough chairs for. A young couple lives there with their 2 small children. After the service they served hot tea and bread. I was rather dubious about the tea but it was quite good! I walked back home. When I got home, Chancela was just sending the pregnant lady home. Everything seemed to be normal and it didn't seem like she would deliver anytime soon. She had just seen another emergency also and the lady we had passed on the road was waiting to be seen so Jay checked her out. Her systolic blood pressure was well over 200 and her complaint was that her right side felt "dead". She had probably had a small stroke. There isn't anything we can do for that up here on the mountain but Jay did give her some blood pressure medication and pain medication and had her lie down for a while. She had to have a second dose of blood pressure medication before her pressure was low enough that we felt comfortable sending her on her way with daily meds.        

     As most of you probably know, on Saturday there was an earthquake here in Haiti. The earthquake epicenter was in  Les Cayes. That is approximately 107 miles away from Oriani. We felt the ground shaking but there was no damage done here. It happened at about 8:30 in the morning. I was sitting on my bed reading something on my phone when it felt like I was shaking. I thought I must be dreaming but when I looked up and looked around my room my dresses were all swaying and a cord for some of the lights in my room was swinging back and forth too. I went to the market in Foret des Pins with Brianna and Ellie. Then on Saturday evening we were invited to Jesse and Kiki's for a weiner roast. They are missionaries from another church who live near Gwo Cheval. 

     Sunday started out as a normal Sunday- breakfast and then church at 9:00. We had a member's meeting after church so lunch was a little later than normal. Evening church is at 4:00. Probably around 3:00 we got a call that there had been a truck accident and we should prepare for a bunch of injured patients. The accident happened near Gwo Cheval so some patients would probably go to the clinic in Foret and some would come to us. So Jay and I headed to the clinic. Roseline was down in Port-au-Prince with her family for the weekend and Chancela was in the middle of cooking supper. There were 2 patients at the clinic when we got there- a lady who possibly had a fractured hip and a man with just a couple of scrapes- nothing that even needed to be sutured. Jay tried to see if he could identify a fracture with our ultrasound machine but was unable to tell for sure. We treated those 2 and waited quite some time, hoping for more patients. There were supposedly about 30 people on the truck but it sounded like it had tipped over while trying to pass another stopped truck on the road so it probably wasn't going very fast. The clinic in Foret had gotten about 10 patients- it sounded like several of them would need some stitches, etc... but nothing very bad. I was disappointed we didn't get any more patients... good for them though. Sunday evening it rained a little bit then the rain from the tropical depression started in for real on Monday mid morning. We had a lot of patients to see on Monday- they had come before the rain started. With the tin roof on the clinic it isn't easy to hear and communicate if it rains very hard but we were able to see all of the patients who had come. The lady whose blood pressure was so high on Friday came back in to have it checked again. Her blood pressure was much better this time, obviously the medication was working. She still had the complaint that her right side feels "dead", but she is able to move it. We gave her a randevou to re-check her blood pressure again in a week. We finished seeing patients at about 3 pm then worked in the pharmacy for a while, hoping the rain would let up briefly so we could walk home. Nope, that wasn't going to happen so about 4 pm Roseline, Chancela, and I dressed up in our makeshift rain gear- white plastic trash bags for rain coats, black trash bags as shoe covers/boots and whatever else we could figure out to attempt to stay at least partially dry then headed home. It was an interesting walk home, we were pretty much soaked by the time we got here. I stuck my head in the house long enough to ask Brianna if she could put some water on the stove so I could have something hot to drink after I showered. She made soup and kolaches for supper then we worked on a puzzle for a while. It rained all evening also and off and on through the night but this morning it was past. We got over 5 inches of rain. Currently the cistern is about 1 inch from overflowing. Today was a slow day at the clinic though, actually there were only a couple of patients there when we started this morning but they slowly trickled in off and on all morning. I saw a few people but mostly worked in the pharmacy. I'm trying to organize it a bit and getting rid of some medications that are expired. We all came home right before lunch today. I did some laundry then worked on supper off and on all afternoon. I made fajitas, black beans, sopa, and a carrot cake for desert. After supper I took a walk while the rest did the dishes.