Today while ten of our team members went to the Home for Sick and Dying Babies, four of us went to the wound clinic. We've known for a couple months that only 4 of us could have the opportunity to go to the wound clinic and since I work in the medical field it was kind of expected that I would want to go. It was like a scary roller coaster or scary movie or bad car accident; I wanted to go but then again I didn't. I also didn't want to stop someone else from having a chance. I spent some time praying about it. Then something really cool happened, Michelle, my leader and friend, handed out the amazing, brand new journals from Healing Haiti. We are one of the first teams to receive them and wouldn't you know it, the preface is all about the wound clinic. It sealed the deal and made me remember a poem I had seen in nursing school. The poem was a question and answer session to a nurse, asking her how she could do things like start IV's, or change a dressing etc. and the nurses answer was always about how the things she's doing is about the person she's helping, not about the thing she is doing.
On the van ride to the clinic we drove past thousands of people, living amongst garbage trying to earn a living selling hundreds of miscellaneous items. Sadly no one seemed to be buying. It seemed impossible that we would even reach the clinic with everything and everybody filling the broken down, pothole filled roads. We made it. I was impressed with all the supplies and medications that the clinic had. Small buckets that had hydrogen peroxide, betadine, neosporine, and cotton for cleaning the wounds, gauze and bandages that were bed sheets ripped into strips. The four of us grabbed a bucket and jumped right into the line of people waiting to have their dressings changed. These wounds were huge, deep, infected, dirty, old. Some of them looked so bad they just needed to have the particular limb amputated. I took a deep breath and asked God to give me the strength to care for these people the way they needed. I just couldn't stop looking at this giant area of open flesh on this elderly mans leg. And then I remembered, this is someone's father, brother, grandpa. He is a human, just like me. My soul settled as I focused on the man and his need rather than the ugly wound. He gently guided my every move with patience, telling me each step (in Creole). As I was finishing up with the dressing, I grabbed a roll of sheet strips and as I began unrolling it to wrap this old mans leg, I saw that it was exactly like some sheets my grandparents had when I was little. I was hoping he wouldn't be offended by the tiny flower design. Instantly I subconsciously gave myself a slap on the face as I came back to reality. We're in Haiti and this man has nothing and he's thankful for the tiny flower sheet strips that I'm wrapping around his wound. He got up to leave he said, "Merci, Merci". I answered back with my best "Pardekwa" (you're welcome) and his face lit up. I love the way their faces light up with a simple word and a smile and some TLC.
The way we dressed these wounds is nothing like how we do it America, I shuttered at the lack of sterile or even clean procedure, if you can even call it a procedure. But what I loved about the way we changed the dressings today in Haiti was with complete compassion, not at all distracted by all the tedious charting we would have to complete in the US.
God, thank you for today. Please help me to remember today. To remember how blessed we are. To be thankful.
~Shelley M~
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