Hospital Visits

Our nurse has been gone for the past three weeks, so the rest of us have had a chance to practice our nursing skills. Mostly this means giving out regular medications to some of our kids, but it has also involved a lot of fever patrol, bandage applying and medication preparation. It has also required us to realize our lack of training and need for outside help. In addition to email contact with medical professionals in the States, we have also taken several of our kids to our local(ish) hospital. Some have gone for routine check-ups, others for consults with visiting doctors, and a couple have been admitted. All of these trips mean that I have spent A LOT of time at the hospital in the last week and a half. Last week involved a total of six trips in five days and this week has included a couple more.

While I have been to the hospital during my previous trips, these last few days have helped me learn a lot about how the system works, and it's definitely different then at home. Here is how one of our trips went last week:

1. Decide, in the early evening, to take one of our sick babies into the hospital. Pack a bag with everything she needs in case she is admitted. This includes sheets for the bed, milk, food, cleaning supplies, bottles, etc. Leave for the hospital with one of our Haitian staff driving, the baby on my lap, a volunteer along for the experience, and a nanny in case the baby is admitted.

2. Arrive at the hospital and look for the American doctor who saw the baby the day before. See him walking away as we try to convince the guards to let us drive in to the volunteer housing area. Have them call the doctor back. The doctor looks at the baby and tells us to go to the emergency area and he will come up after our consult with the Haitian doctor.

3. Go to the main hospital area and head upstairs to where the doctor is. Wait for awhile, see random blood and IVs, talk to a nurse who asks if we have had the baby there before. Say no. Have to go back downstairs to the pediatric area to get the baby weighed. Have the baby weighed. Go back upstairs. Wait a little more.

4. See a doctor. Thankfully, the one who speaks both Creole and English. Since I barely know medical words in English, it's sometimes too much of a challenge to understand them in a foreign language. Answer some questions. Get the baby's temperature taken. Go downstairs to the pediatric area with the doctor. Have the baby admitted. Hear what the doctor thinks may be the problem. Get told that more tests will be done in the morning when the lab and xray places are open.

5. Watch the baby's IV get put in. Help the nurse put on the tape to hold the IV in place.

6. Get a list of the meds we need. Have our driver go get them. (I didn't on this particular trip, but from other experiences, I know this involves standing in one line to find out how much you have to pay, going to another area and actually paying, going to the pharmacy and picking up the meds and finally bringing them back to the hospital staff.)

7. Make sure the nanny has money to buy any other needed supplies. Say goodnight to baby and nanny. Head home.

All of this happened in about two hours and was really a pretty smooth process. Two of our kiddos are still in the hospital right now, but seem to be doing better.

In Haiti, if you need blood, you are required to get other people to donate some that they do not run out of blood. In exchange for the transfusions our kids have had recently, we had to agree to donate blood as well. They asked us to have two people donate. So on Monday morning, I took a group of volunteers to do this, found out that we couldn't do it until Wednesday and so came back then. In total, we had four volunteers who agreed to donate blood. They were all first-time donors, but did great despite their nerves and we're very excited with the shirts they got. I even got a shirt for going along and helping translate. In Creole, the shirts say something like, "the more people that give, the more people that live." (That's the rhyming English version we came up with.) It really was a great opportunity, especially since the need for blood is great and no one will be able to donate when they go home anyways. We are even thinking about giving more volunteers the option to do this when they come down. It's a great, simple way to help.

And the best news of this post is... Sheila, our nurse, gets back tomorrow!! We're very excited to have her back, catch her up on everything she missed, and give her her job back! :)