Don't drive drunk!!!

 Yesterday evening after dark an emergency came to the gate. Jay went to Port-au-Prince yesterday to pick up medications and he wasn't back yet so I went to see what was going on. At first I couldn't see much, just a bloody eye and face. I got some gauze and water to wash some of the blood off  so I could see what kind of an injury we were dealing with. This evaluation was done on the front porch which only has one light so I had the man who had come with the patient hold my phone with the flashlight on so I could see better. This guy's lower eyelid was ripped- on both sides of his eye. It looked like the eyeball itself wasn't injured but the eyelid was badly torn in several places. I sent a couple of pictures of the injury to Jay, hoping he was somewhere on the road where he had service so he could give me a second opinion. Initially I did not think I could fix this and would need to send this man down to a hospital but the more I looked at it I thought maybe I could try but I needed him at the clinic so I had better light and he could lie down. I gave him a shot for pain then called Jay. He hadn't gotten the pictures yet but he had cell service so I tried to explain the injury to him. He thought also that if the eyeball itself wasn't injured we could try to stitch it up. So I sent the patient to the clinic and went to get my shoes, a jacket, clinic keys, etc... the moto driver was waiting to take me on the moto also but Chancela was going to come help me so he went ahead and we walked. At the clinic, there were no lights. Nothing, at all! Not even a porch light. I was unable to get Jay on the phone now, he was obviously driving through a place where there was no service. Using my flashlight and a headlamp flashlight, I found a breaker box but all of the switches were turned on. I called Brianna to see if she had any ideas. She called Quentin for me and in a few minutes he was there. Meanwhile Chancela had gotten the guy onto the exam table and was starting to clean off more blood with the light from her headlamp. I don't know what Quentin had to do but he had the lights on in a few minutes so we could begin for real. We used lidocaine to numb it as much as we could. I used the needle to touch the skin there by his eye to see if it was numb. The guy wouldn't even answer me. He was quite drunk! In this case, I believe it was very much of a blessing that he wasn't totally with it. It had to be a very painful procedure even with lidocaine.                

Side note- do not try to drive moto when you are drunk!!! I have no idea how this injury even happened... I will put before and after pictures at the end of this post.

There were a couple of times during the stitching where the guy roused enough that he wanted to put his hands up to his face or he tried to slide down on the table but Chancela sternly told him to put his hands down and scoot back up on the exam table! We did have to help him put his hands down several times then try to readjust the drape we had over his chest. The skin came together well on both sides of the eye then we had some stitching to do on his forehead and a place on his upper lip. Jay arrived in time to put a few stitches in his hand while we were finishing up with his face. We gave him antibiotics, pain meds, and some antibiotic eye drops and sent him on his way. He is supposed to come to clinic tomorrow for us to check the wound. Hopefully he will come.

Just a warning... these pictures are kinda nasty!