The Calvary are coming!

At this point, Michael and I decided this was all too complicated so we decided to go back to our compound and check in with the team. As we were escorted back to our beat-up toyota, the Marines guarding the gate asked how our meeting went. When I said, "not too well", they were very interested as to why. The toyota seemed to be running better and as we pulled up to the entrance to our compound, I noticed a big iron gate on the ground, a victim of the earthquake and the reason we couldn't secure our compound. One of our team members, Nate, a volunteer Woodway police officer was guarding the gate with a rope across it and told us he'd been successful at turning away all Haitians except those with life-threatening issues......as instructed by one of our team doctors.

As we drove through the crowd of Haitians to the "treatment area", all the docs and nurses were still hovering over the patients with camping headlights as the only source of illumination. We discussed our meeting with Marines and decided that Nate was doing a good enough job for now. Just then, (queue the "Indiana Jones" music), the Marines drive into our compound in two Hummers! There were in full body armor with M-16's strapped to their sides. It was the gate guards and two of the Marines who heard the CO's comments in their headquarters tent. They said, "we talked the CO into letting us be here as just a "presence"....but not security for you!". These guys were sympathetic to our cause. All they had to do was stroll through the crowd just once and it dispersed. Things were much more peaceful now. The Marines said they couldn't stay long so after a few minutes and much thanks from us, they departed. About 5' after they left, in drive the Spanish! Apparently they had decided to come after our seizing pregnant lady. They had on OB/gyn with them and he asked all the right questions that made us assured that she would be in good hands. They loaded her into their military ambulance and drove off with lights flashing. A few minutes later, we heard their chopper taking off and heading out to their hospital ship. The Spanish called the next morning asking to borrow some of our IV medications for our pregnant patient. We needed some Foley catheters so we made a deal and an exchange with the Spanish. They said the patient had an emergent C-section that nite, fetus was still born as expected but mother was doing well.

Back to the nite before,...so now we had 3 burn patients, and two trauma victims in serious condition to watch over nite. We decided to take 2 hour shifts overnite, one doc, one nurse at a time. I had the 11pm to 1am shift with an awesome Angel of a nurse from Michigan. We had all kinds of issues with a Foley catheter (hence our need for more) on one of our burn patients and had to rig something made out of syringes to make it work (an idea of Michael's, our miracle-working McGyver). All the patients seemed to be stable as we handed off to the next shift. Sleep did not come easy after this adventure and about 2pm, I could hear some rumbling in the distance, then heard the metal roof shaking on the nearest building. Sleeping on the top bunk, it then started to shake pretty good for about 5 seconds......an aftershock.

We all awoke the next morning and made the rounds on all the patients. A few more patients walked up in the middle of the nite, it was reported, but they weren't serious so they were assessed and "discharged" from our compound.

About this time I was alerted to a pregnant patient who had walked one and a half hours out of the mountains. The story was she had delivered a stillborn child at home but the placenta had not passed. The patient arrived with the "midwife", it was explained to me, from this mountain village. Strangely enough, this "midwife" was a middle-aged MAN. This midwife feared she may have another baby inside of her. I assessed her......her uterine fundus was high indicating her uterus was not empty. No fetal heart tones were heard with doppler so either there's another non-viable fetus inside or just retained placenta. Cervical exam did not reveal any fetal parts. One of the ER residents on our team gave some anesthesia as I manually explored her womb and removed the retained placenta. We gave her some IV fluids and IV antibiotics and were able to discharge her home in good condition a few hours later.

One or two more posts to come soon, then i'm done!