Hi all. Not sure when I’ll get to post this, but right now it’s Sunday morning. Things at the Fany Villa (our house) are slow this weekend- the truck we were renting is now gone because the owners wanted us to purchase it for a rather expensive price (cars down here are really pricey). So were carless for a few days, which led to a couple rides home from HUEH/TB tents on the bike with Cassidy. Yesterday, we found an OLD Nissan Pathfinder to rent until Tuesday, when hopefully we will have acquired another car due to the generous donation of Patricia Arquette (see BP’s blog for details on that). This car cuts off often- on the way to GrassRoots last night I think it cut off 6 times. I was considering driving the truck occasionally if needed but I don’t think I’ll be driving this car.
On Thursday, Jeanne and I were at the tents with Megan when she was called to the ER to see a patient. He was really hypoxic and his oxygen saturation was in the 70s (it needs to be above 90). Because of this, it was imperative that he wear a nonrebreather mask connected to oxygen. But he was freaking out, and constantly taking the mask off. Megan says that a lot of patients here are freaked out by the masks, and sometimes the nurses will let the patients take them off- and when patients are wearing these masks, it’s pretty much a life or death situation. Anyway, Megan is trying to tell the patient to keep the mask on or die, and he just wasn’t having it. It was really sad because he wasn’t acting right maybe because he had been hypoxic for quite some time and enough oxygen wasn’t getting to his brain. Jeanne and I were preparing an IV medication by using a needle and syringe to draw normal saline out of a bag that was sitting near the patient. At one point, the patient was so frantic that he grabbed the bag, took the needle and syringe out of it, and was threatening anyone who got close to him with the needle. Eventually he dropped it and nothing came of it, but it was a little unsettling just the same. We had to leave for the night shortly after this, but we found out the next day that he died that night around 11:30 pm.
On Friday I headed to the tents in the morning by myself so that Jeanne could sleep in, and successfully started an IV all by myself! Granted, the guy was really skinny and had HUGE veins but it was encouraging. We have a lot of glass bottles of Lactated Ringers (an IV fluid) that are from some other country- no one uses glass bottles in America (that I know of) for pretty obvious reasons. Jeanne and I use these bottles at the tents a lot, and you have to wrap them up with a lot of tape and make a loop so that you can hang them up. It’s a pain- and apparently I didn’t wrap one of the bottles well and it fell to the floor and smashed right before I put this IV in. Not the best way to start the day but I cleaned it up the best I could and made sure everyone knew to be careful. Hopefully we don’t go there this week and have to change someone’s foot dressing.
Yesterday Jeanne, Tuwanda and I were getting a little stir crazy sitting here at the house with no mode of transportation and nothing to do. So we decided to take a little walk- it was really liberating to walk out of the gate and walk down the street! We were planning on going by ourselves and just circling the block in the neighborhood, but Ellie (a Haitian boy who lives with us- he is so sweet) decided to go with us. We ended up walking to the Plaza Hotel and sitting on the rooftop deck for a few minutes. It was nice to be able to do something without depending on a car. Also nice to know that the Plaza is really within walking distance.
Last night, we went over to GrassRoots United (GRU) to hang out, and 9 of us ended up going to a club. I need to get some better dance moves to hang out with this crowd. I think it was the latest I’ve stayed out since I got here and I was exhausted by the time we got home. Now, Tuwanda and I are about to test out the maple sausage MRE because we heard it was good from a credible source. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The plan for this week (plans change pretty frequently around here though) is to vaccinate kids at an orphanage and then Jeanne and I might go work with Partners in Development (PID) at their clinic in Cite Soleil. If we do this, we will be staying there for a few days because no one here would drive into Cite Soleil at night to pick us up (dangerous). But hey, maybe they have internet there! Will keep everyone posted.
E
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