Mission Trip Report- June 12-20, 2012
Overall Missions Goal: Serve God’s beloved poor.
Mission Focus Area #2 – Health Care for our Sister Parish
Medical clinic/pharmacy
Clinic Results/Numbers - Totals were 927 Patients that went through our 4 days of clinic.
1. We made sure that anyone who wanted to go to clinic got to go to clinic, those who seemed the poorest or the most needy were put at the front of the line.
2. Most every patient that came into the clinic had an ID card either from a previous trip or from our ID card station that was producing ID cards this trip. The ID
card station was easily able to keep up and keep us supplied with patients.
3. We used lights most every night to finish.
4. Several patients came back to thank us for medical care they had received in the past. I took pictures and gathered the names of these patients. It was so
rewarding to have them coming back so happy and thanking us.
5. Two of our three major areas of focus for this trip remained the same as the last trip. We wanted to further improve our blood pressure program process and
we wanted to continue to grow the capabilities and mature the responsibilities of the full time Haitian nurse we hired. We also wanted to fully utilize the
portable Echo cardiogram which we brought with us this time so we could get new and more information on the patients which are in dire need of surgery.
6. Before we started the clinic we talked to the health care workers about the blood pressure program. They said they could still handle the number of patients in
the program and would be ok if we added about 30 more patients. I asked them how many people were currently in the program and they said 200. I looked at
our information and found we show that we have 300 people in the program. I talked to the health care workers about this and they said the rest of the people
are not compliant, live too far away, or they don’t know where they live in order to find them. The health care workers suggested we drop these patients,
however we do not yet have a list of which patients this would be. We will ask the nurse and the health workers to take our list and mark up who to keep and
show to get rid of so we can have a list of currently active patients.
7. Since the health care workers said they could take on about 30 more patients in the blood pressure program, we went ahead and added about that many
more.
8. There is a little girl named Roselor that we have been working with for several years. She has a PDA heart condition and is in dire need of coming to the USA
for heart surgery. We have been working with an organization called “Everyone’s Child International” to bring her to the USA for surgery. They are getting
extremely close to being ready to bring her over. We checked Roselor’s heart and truly she is in dire need of heart surgery. We documented the current status
of her PDA through a full Echo report.
9. Every trip we have a number of patients that come into clinic that talk to the doctors about their situation and it is extremely bad. Many of these families have 6
or more kids often missing the father or the mother sometimes through death, other times because he ran away because it was too difficult. They report to the
doctors the difficulties of their situations which are enormous and they have little to eat and the kids are clearly starving. For these families we had a special
donation of a $1070 this trip. When people with this situation came in this trip, I took their names, information, and photos and I told them to talk to Father next
week. Before the week was over, I talked to Father about them. We then divided up the money we have and left father with money for the people. We really
need a formal “poor mothers” sponsorship program for these cases so we can provide them help every trip, but we have not found the donors to support this
effort yet.
10. After the trip I took the pictures of all the “poor mothers” and their details and typed up the details of each patient as best we know it and sent it to the $1,000
donor for this project. I was a lengthy and detailed 8-page report. This would be a good report to show anyone the difficulties of life in Haiti because the
challenges of the lives of these are not that unusual for all of Haiti.
11. Six months ago there was a 14 year old girl that came into clinic with a baby that was only a couple months old where the birth mother of the baby was no
longer around to feed or care for the baby so this girl was now taking care of it. This 14 year old mother and the baby came into clinic again this time. We had
some formula and bottles for the baby last trip and we gave them to her. We also left extra money with Father so he could get her more formula as she used
up the formula we gave her. We did not have enough get her through all six months, but through part of it. However the baby was still alive. Praised be God!
The baby looked fairly good. We gave the 14 year old mother more formula and left more money with Father to get her additional formula to help get her
through at least a couple more months.
12. It was a huge help on this trip to have the portable Echo-cardiogram. We used it much each day. We used it for a huge number of things….not just for
checking hearts. The doctors have asked that we look into getting one for every trip. Chip said that his company donates the demo units at the end of the
year. He said he would help us apply for the unit. Need to work with him to see if we can make that happen.
13. We had about 4 cases this trip where we needed X-rays on people. Our only option was to send Father and the people down the mountain to Jacmel to get
them done. The road was wet and muddy from all the rain. The drive is 3 to 4 hours one way. Father took patients down to Jacmel nearly every day we had
clinic. When he got to Jacmel with the first patients he took, they were not able to do the X-ray because they were missing the X-ray paper or something like
that. We really need to figure out some better way to do a simple test like this.
14. One of the most challenging cases we had during the trip was a three year old boy that came in and appeared to be in severe pain. He was not able to hold
his head straight and wanted to roll it back all the time. There appeared to be something going on with his brain. It was clear that the patient needed quick
help and he was moved to the top of our priority list, but we all feared that in this country there would be nothing that could be done for a case with an issue
with the brain. However we needed to rule out some of the possibilities like hydrocephalus. We decided the patient needed a three step check out plan. First
he needed a CT brain scan. Depending on how that went he would likely then need a neurology consultation. Finally he was likely going to need surgery.
There is only one lab in Haiti that can do a CT brain scan. It is in Port-au-Prince. Once we decided on the plan and we instructed the mother to prepare
herself and the child to travel to Port-au-Prince with us on our way to the airport. On our last day in Haiti we took the patient down the mountain with us to
Port-au-Prince. Father Nexcene has a cousin that works at the Radio Lab which has the CT scan machine. We got the patient right in for a CT scan and
praised be God it did not show any issues! Laikaard then contacted one of the top neurologists in the country and set us up with a consultation for the patient
the same day. We then entrusted the patient to Laikaard and the mother and the child stayed with him while we went to the airport. Laikaard continued to
work with the patient for a couple months after we left Haiti. The patient was seen by the neurologist and went through several weeks of physical therapy. The
patient was greatly improved, but not back to normal, but there is little more that could be done for the child in Haiti. Finally the child and mother were sent
back to Gandou.
15. We had several cases of young people coming in with huge hand and leg infections. For these cases we cleaned the wounds, packed them, and started the
patients on strong antibiotic. However in two of the cases we greatly feared that there was still a foreign body, osteomyelitis, or infected hardware (screws or
pins holding the bones together) that would need surgery to fix. In these cases on the last day of clinic we sent these patients down the mountain with father
to have an X-ray done. In one case we found no signs of further issues so we continued the patient on the antibiotics and gave the patient a tetanus shot and
asked our nurse/health workers to keep special watch of the patient.
16. For the second case the young man did have a pin in his bone and there was nothing we could do but tell him that he is going to need to have the hardware
removed and to start over. We worked out a plan for his young man and after a couple weeks Father emailed us back that the boys hand had been taken care
of. God is good.
17. One of the more recent improvements in the care we provide is including tetanus shots on our formulary and taking them down with us on every trip. We
found an available tetanus shot that is good even in the unrefrigerated state for weeks. For this trip we used every dose we had and we would like to have
had more.
Dental clinic and extractions.
Dental Results/Numbers - 337 extractions were reported to have been done by Dr. Peterson .
1. We could not find any dentists from the USA that were able to go with us so we only had one Haitian dentist (Dr. Peterson) with us.
2. Dr. Peterson simply did extraction for the entire time.
3. Worked in the new school building
4. Dr. Peterson had one and often two health care workers helping him.
5. One of our support people (Seth) also spent much of him time helping Dr. Peterson.
6. There was no lack of patients. There was a huge crowd waiting at the dental clinic all day.
7. As always many of the patients had hugely infected, rotten, broken, and loose teeth that were in great need of help.
8. Besides the huge amount of pain that these teeth cause, one of the big concerns is the infection going to the brain and killing the person. Truly the dental clinic
could easily be considered as the most important work we do. Truly lives are being saved by helping them to get these rotten teeth out and the infection
stopped.
ID Cards
1. Cindy McCullough led the effort this trip on the ID card system.
2. It has always been our desire to work ourselves out of a job with this process and this time Cindy started to make this happen.
3. Cindy took the time to start training the three University Students how to use the ID card computer and printer.
4. By the end of the week they were able to do most of the work on their own.
5. They were not perfect but they could do it.
6. Great job Cindy…this should really help us in the future.
7. Cindy reported that the camera we have for this work needs to be replaced because it was drinking the “juice” from the batteries so fast…not sure why….she
ended up using her personnel camera for the job.
8. Still really need a “How To” document to train new people how to do this.
9. Might always want to translate that to Kreyol.
10.The ID card team was able to do the ID cards fast enough that they were able to keep up with the pace of the three health care providers in the clinic and we
never lacked patients.
11.The ID card team has a very difficult job to do when they are there….keeping peace in the crowd, keeping things organized, keeping the equipment going,
getting names spelled correctly, sorting out who is who, keeping pictures connect with names, and doing this for 10 hours a day….wow great job for all that
helped with this!
Mission Focus Area #3 – Team Members Experience Haiti and Especially Our Sister Parish.
Port-au-Prince
1. Our flight into Haiti was delayed several times but it was still light by the time we got into Port-au-Prince.
2. The customs people searched several of the bags for outdated medicines.
3. Once again the customs people complained about our ministry of health form. They said we do everything exactly right, but should get a form back from the
ministry of health. We have always sent in our forms months ahead of the trip and never gotten anything back.
4. The customs people told us that they were going to hold all our bags.
5. We really thought we were not going to make it through customs for a long period of time.
6. Every time they seem to get more strict….I expect that we will not make it through next time if we don’t have the proper paperwork back from the Ministry of
Health.
7. Finally after a few minutes they told us we could go. We must have this figured out before the next trip.
8. The people at Customs really act like it is possible to get something back from the Ministry of Health. Even though we have never and we know no other group
that has ever gotten anything back.
9. We asked Sister Mary at Matthew 25 house and she said was personally going to go look into this in the following weeks.
10. After a few weeks after the trip, we got some emails from the Parish Twinning Program and sounded like they were making some real progress on this
subject.
11. For this trip we had a split group coming into Port-au-Prince. The group from Chicago was coming in about an hour and a half after the first group.
12.The first group got everyone outside and we loaded everyone and all the bags into one of Matthew 25 trucks and sent everyone but joe to Mathew 25 house.
13. Joe stayed at the airport to wait on Laikaard and to wait on the other group.
14. Other second flight was on time (Praised be God!) and all the luggage came in (Praised be God!) and we were able to get everyone together (Praised be
God!). We then took everyone to Mathew 25 house.
15. The group from Chicago reported only one issue. They said the people in Chicago at the ticket counter did not like the fact that we had boxes inside the
military duffels which we had packed the supplies in for them. They had to open the duffels and dump the boxes out into the duffels and throw away the
boxes….no one has ever heard of this before.
16. Everyone settled into Matthew 25 guest house well. There were many cool missionaries there to meet and to talk to. We had great fun.
17. The translators showed up at Matthew 25 house the next morning on time.
18. We were able to pack the trucks up and were ready to go by about 9am.
19. At about 9am the majority of the team walked with the translators to Missionaries of Charity Orphanage to work the morning session.
20. This is such an unbelievable place. It is so moving to go there and see the kids in such great need.
21. The kids are so love and attention starved. They just cry when you stop holding them.
22. We must work harder to help so this situation is not so bad. The nuns at the Missionaries of Charity are so overworked…..they need help. The kids need
parents. The kids need love. Surely together we can make this situation better….surely this is what God asks of us.
23. The doctors were able to help several sick kids while we were there. They worked with the sick kids nearly the whole time we were there.
24. Father Nexcene was driving down from Gandou and we keep calling him so we would know where he was.
25. The team left the Missionaries of Charity a little early and came back to Matthew 25 house and we were ready to leave for Gandou by about 11:30am.
Travel to Gandou
1. We had only a few stops on the way to Gandou.
2. We traveled to Gandou through the town of Baudin. The roads were wet and a little muddy in spots.
3. We got to Gandou in near record time…like 5 hours.
4. We took the new road that Father had made with the construction equipment he had borrowed and we had paid for the fuel. This new road speeds things up
so much because of the ways that is has straightened out the path rather than so many curves. This makes it possible to take the trucks much faster up the
mountain.
5. Supper was nearly ready for us when we got there. We ate, set up the tents, and everyone went to bed.
Accommodations in Gandou
1. Women stayed in the two rooms in the rectory, while men were in tents on the flat room.
2. Two bathrooms were available for the women.
3. We had less women on this trip so it was possible for them to all stay in the one large room in the rectory. However it was going to be hard for them to only
have one bathroom. We talked to the guys about this and we decided to give the women both rooms in the rectory and both bathrooms.
4. This was the first trip ever where we have had rain nearly every night we were in Gandou. For the men in the tents on the roof this was a challenge.
5. The first night we were in Gandou just about the time we went to bed it started raining. It was slow at first and it did not come through the tent too bad. After a
little while water started puddling in the tent. Eventually it was not possible to find a dry spot in the tent and I took all my stuff and made a run for the rectory.
When I got down to the rectory I was expecting to find that all the guys bailed out of their tents to find a dry spot to sleep. However there were only two of us
that bailed out from the tents….the rest of the group stayed in the tents all night. The next morning most of the group noted that they stayed fairly dry. One tent
said they were wet all night.
6. With the capped spring and pipes that Caritas paid for, we had plenty of water at the rectory, but people were still very conservative.
7. Everyone did great.
Travel from Gandou back to Port-au-Prince
1. By the end of the week we two patients to go back to Port-au-Prince with us. We told them they had to be at the rectory by 4am in order to go with us.
2. One patient did not show up. The other patient (3 year old boy) and his mother showed up and were ready.
3. As usual we also had extra people that needed to travel with us…for example the three University students needed to get back to Port-au-Prince…some
cooks ... other people we did not know.
4. We talked to a few people about the large number of people we were going to have in the truck and people were very happy to sit in the bed of the trucks.
5. On the way down the mountain the roads were still wet and muddy in spots from the recent rain. One spot in particular it was extremely muddy on a very steep
sloping spot….and it was difficult to keep the truck moving the correct direction as you went down it. There was a special technique that Father used to keep
the truck going straight down this muddy section rather than get turned to the side and possibly cross ways on the road on the side of this mountain.
6.The patient we were taking down the mountain was sleeping on his mother in the back of Father’s truck. One of the guys on the trip, Chip, asked if he could
hold the little boy to help out the mother a little and give her a break. The mother allowed, but after a little time being held by Chip the boy vomited all over
Chip and some of the other people in the back of the truck. Not long after that the boy pooped in his pants, but had not diaper on. We decided that we should
add diapers to our packing list for situations like this. Thanks Chip for being so loving.
7. We made good time down the mountain on the new road and even all the way to Port-au-Prince to the Radio Lab where we needed to stop to take the boy in
for a CT scan.
8. It was very hot outside and we did not want to just keep the group out in the hot sun outside the radio lab so we tried to organize a little drive for them to go on
see a couple sites nearby, but they had to do it while sitting on the back of the truck….the traffic was bad….and it was extremely hot on the back of the truck. It
turned out to be a bad deal for everyone. Finally the group came back to the radio lab and stood in the shade. Everyone in the group was tired, hungry, dirty,
fatigued and just plain worn out. The work at the radio lab took more than an hour….which was too much for people to wait outside in the sun for.
9. However we needed to wait for the US embassy to open so we could call and make an appointment for one of the team members to go in and talk about his
lost passport. As soon as they opened we called them and made an appointment. They said the first thing we needed was a police report. At this point the
group decided to split up into two groups. One group was the group that was planning to go to the airport and leave that day from Haiti. The second group was
the group that was planning to spend an extra day in Haiti. In this group were two members who were going to stay as long as necessary in Haiti in order to
get the one person’s passport. The group that was planning to say took the rental truck and one of the translators and went to the police station and filed a
police report to be prepared for their next day.
10.The work at the radio lab found good news, the boy we had brought did not have hydrocephalus, praised be God….that is the good news….the bad news was
that we did not have a diagnosis and we would need to get the boy in to a neurologist to figure out what was going on. Laikaard took the case on and
contacted one of his friends that was a neurologist. He quickly had an appointment with the neurologist that same afternoon.
11.We went back to Matthew 25 house to pick up our souvenirs which we had purchased on our way into Haiti at the start of the trip.
12. We were running out of time so we sent the patient with Laikaard to the neurologist while we went to the airport.
13.The planes were close to on-time the rest of the trip with little to no issues.
Exposure to Haiti
1. There are always a couple key things that stand out people’s minds on the Haiti trip. First is typically is just the experience of everything at the airport when
you first get into Haiti. It helps to get people ready for all that they will see from the truck in Port-au-Prince.
2. Another extremely noteworthy part of the trip is the exposure the people get to Haiti at the Missionaries of Charity Orphanage which we visit in Port-au-Prince
on the second day of the trip.
3. This trip, when we first walked into the orphanage, we saw lots of very sick kids including one with sores all over his face. He must have been in extreme pain.
4. So many of the children have fevers and obviously unhealthy…that is typically at least part of the reason why they are there in the first place.
5. Our doctors were able to walk right in and talk to the nuns and start seeing patients right away and they saw patients basically the whole time.
6. The rest of us held babies or did whatever the nuns wanted us to do.
7. I don’t think there is anything that better describes the suffering in Haiti than one trip to this orphanage. The sickness, the pain, the crying, the hunger, the
longing for love…but in the midst of all this the will to live and grow in love and the loving hands of nuns and the rest of us trying our best to help out.
8. The travel to and from Gandou is always good for people to experience because it too opens our eyes to the way that people live in Haiti.
9. The sights of the “tent” cities are clear signs of suffering people. Still today they are there, and I can’t image the suffering that must have existed after the
hurricane that went through during the later part of August.
10.The slum area we drive past is unbelievable. People out digging through and working next to huge piles of trash.
11. While in Gandou much of the team went to walk to the spring and to market. This helped them better understand the daily life in Gandou.
12. Unfortunately during this trip we had a situation where a passport of one of the team members could no longer be found. We were in Gandou when he went
looking for his passport and could not find it. He remembers putting it in a certain spot, but it could not be found. He went through all his stuff several times
and it simply could not be found.
13. We found this issue a couple days before we were to leave Gandou so we started planning on what we might do to once we get him back to Port-au-Prince to
get him another passport so he could go home.
14. We found out that he was going to need to file a police report in Port-au-Prince and show up at the US embassy with the police report and work with them to
get the paperwork necessary to get out of the country.
15. We knew this was going to take an extra day or two or three and one of his friends from the trip agreed to stay with him to work through the details. Both of
the men were experienced travelers and they did not need help from the rest of the group.
16. Our translators Joseph and Laikaard stayed with them to help them.
17. In just one day they were able to get all the paper work they needed and were able to fly out of Port-au-Prince towards home.
Other
General Haiti Earthquake Situation
1. Very little progress in Port-au-Prince.
2. The capital building and the Cathedral still lay in what looks like the same condition they were in just after the earthquake happened.
3. Some of the fields of tents seemed to turn into fields of makeshift “homes”, mostly tarps over sticks.
4. Unclear how this is working when it is raining.
5. Unclear where these people are going to the bathroom.
6. Unclear how they are cooking.
7. Makeshift “homes” are all very close together.
8. Clearly there are many suffering people.
9. I can’t even imagine what it was like when the August 2012 hurricane went through. Can you image going through that when everything you own in the world
is under a piece of plastic or a tarp.
Day by Day Events Summary:
1. Tuesday June 12 – Team traveled to Port-au-Prince and stayed in Mathew 25 guest house.
2. Wednesday June 13 – Team walked to the Missionaries of Charity Orphanage and worked the morning session there. Father Nexcene arrived at the guest
house and we loaded up the trucks and we all drove out to Gandou. We got there in the light and we setup tents and prepared for the next day.
3. Thursday June 14. – Setup medical and dental clinic and had clinic all day.
4. Friday June 15 - Ran medical and dental clinic all day and late into the evening.
5. Saturday June 16 - Ran medical and dental clinic all day and late into the evening.
6. Sunday June 17 – Mass, meeting with the health workers, college students, nurse, and with Father. Rained most of the day and no one could get out of
the house to walk around the area.
7. Monday June 18. - Ran medical and dental clinic all day and late into the evening.
8.Tuesday June 19 - Got up at 4:30am. Traveled back to Port-au-Prince. Took patients to radio lab. Much of the group left Haiti. Traveled to Miami and spent the
night there in a hotel. Others were planning to stay for one more day at a hotel in Port-au-Prince. Two from the group were saying to work on getting a new
passport to replace the lost one.
9. Wednesday June 20 –Some of the group traveled from Miami to Indy and finally home. Others traveled to Miami and stayed there as planned. The two people
that stayed to work on the passport got the passport and left early the next day.
10.Praised be God he keep us safe!