challenges, by Denise

January 25th, 2015
Yesterday was quite a day, it started out normal. I did the laundry and a young girl was helping me. The young lady complained of ear pain. I looked through my stores of meds and found some amoxilcillin but didn’t feel comfortable prescribing antibiotics. I would usually call Sr. Jackie but I knew she was busy with a medical team and was leaving for the States so I didn’t want to bother her. Then I remember our new friends , Anita works in medical so I called her. She said she would come over and had a better antibiotic for ear infections. A short time later a lady about my age came and complained her arm had tension, and it was making her lean to that side. She looked normal, her arm seemed to move normally and she was not leaning to her side, but I told her a nurse was coming and she could talk to her. Not five minutes later Jon Lwi came and asked for the Gator. I told him no. Then he told me there was a lady who is pregnant and I thought he was saying her water broke. So I told him a nurse was coming, and I would go to see the lady while we waited.
I left with him and several other people to what I thought was her house, but instead I found her on a stretcher in the middle of the road. She was bleeding; Anita the nurse was walking up the road at the same time. We accessed the situation and decided she needed to go to the hospital. I ran back to my house changed my clothes very fast and grabbed some money. When I got to Anita’s truck they had just gotten the women loaded with several of her family members.
We went to the hospital in town. The poor woman was unloaded and it seemed that maybe the bleeding was worsening. She was taken into a room and they took her blood pressure, started an IV and then told us they don’t have an obstetrician and she needs to go to Gonaives to the hospital there. So we loaded everyone up, with the IV bags and headed to Gonaives. This hospital is an hour away over a very bad road, travel is slow. We thought several times maybe we should stop and check on the lady but decided we could really do nothing for her and we needed to just keep going.
The hospital there is brand new, and we were told they specialize in obstetrics. The woman was unloaded again and the whole family piled out, in the emergency room she sat up on the stretcher and asked for water, she was quickly taken back to the obstetric ward. In just a few minutes a nurse came out with a prescription and told us she needed the medication fast. I looked at the prescription and could tell part of it was an IV. We looked for a Pharmacy in the hospital and then found out we needed to leave the hospital and go up the road to this little shack to buy these medications. So off we went, for five American dollars I was able to buy what she needed. One of the men in her family literally ran the medications back to the unit. Anita and I walked back and stopped at stand to buy water. When we returned to the unit we didn’t wait long before the head nurse came out and told us that the baby had died and the mother. We were completely shocked. The poor husband was devastated. Then we all had to wait for about two hours for the doctor to finish a surgery so he could pronounce her dead and sign a death certificate.
We then loaded everyone including the lady that died back up and drove back to Gros Morne , the family wanted to take her to a funeral home (usually they have the funeral in their homes). I had called Sr. Jackie to tell her the woman had died, she warned me to make sure the family understood we would not be responsible for the cost of the funeral. When we arrived at the funeral home it was about 8:30 at night no one was there, and the family called the number on the door. The funeral director came quickly we unloaded the lady. The family made the arrangements and we once again loaded up and Anita drove us up the mountain to Garcin. On the way up the mountain we came across a moto with a casket, we stopped and the husband got out to talk to the moto driver and to inspect the casket.
It was well after nine o’clock before we arrived back in Garcin. Many people gathered and you could hear the keening. Many people were crying. The people held my arm as we walked up the road to my house to make sure I didn’t fall in the dark. I left them at the gate and continued up to the apartment, where there were more of our friends waiting. I did not know this woman that died but she was loved in her community. I found out she had two other small children.
We left for Port Au Prince the next morning so I am not sure of the funeral plans. I know the family and friends will help this family get through this experience. In Haiti death is far more common place among young people, many women and babies die. There is no prenatal care especially in the outlying villages. We are trying to open a mobile clinic in our community, maybe had this women had access to health care this could have been prevented. But often the people don’t use their local clinics because they lack faith in the nurses that run them, or they just don’t have the money to go.
Please keep this family in your prayers; working in Haiti can be very difficult.
Thank you for your interest in our experience here,
Denise