If I thought I was ready for this experience, today certainly proved me wrong. Just the drive through Port-au-Prince to the Presidential Palace was disconcerting. We saw devastation of many buildings, cars that had quake damage and were abandoned, tent cities, make shift market areas, throngs of humanity walking the streets. In spite of the crippling effect of the earthquake, life is going on in Port-au-Prince.

We arrived at the Palace Guard Police Station around 8 am where the Youth with a Mission (YWAM) organization has established a working hospital using tarps, tents, and undamaged rooms of the police station building. It was well organized with a pharmacy, ER/Triage, pediatric ER, OB/GYN area, acute care clinic/recovery room, dentist office, and surgical room. The conditions were most primitive but it was certainly functional and the system worked.

The ER/Triage was set up outside under a tarp with seven backyard folding lounge chairs as patient stations. There was a nurse or doctor and a translator at each station. I did have an interpreter since many Haitian do not speak French. They could understand my French but responded in Creole, which I couldn’t understand. YWAM provided the translators and they were excellent. At one point I had a translator who didn’t speak English but she did speak French so she translated the Creole into French for me.

I worked in the ER/Triage, seeing patients literally one after the other for six hours. It took me a few minutes to realize that I was to do the assessment of the patients and decide whether or not to send them inside for more acute care or to treat and give appropriate medicines. Of course I could and did often call on one for the physicians for advice or confirmation of care. The “pharmacy” was set up on the other side of an iron fence from the ER and as I saw each patient and decided what to give, I went to the fence and asked for medications that were then passed through the fence to me. This gave a degree of protection for the medications stored in the pharmacy.

Most common complaints were stomach pain, back pain, headache and respiratory problems. We treated with antacids, Tylenol or Motrin and unit dose inhalers for those with respiratory issues. We also saw a lot of people complaining with irritated eyes due to all the dust that is still in the air. We gave out eye drops as long as we had them, then started flushing eyes with saline drawn up in a syringe and sending patients home with a saline filled syringe. I redressed wounds that had been caused by falling objects during the quake. If there were signs and symptoms of infection, we gave antibiotics. There were a few more acute problems – a thumb that needed suturing which one of the doctors did, a woman who was pregnant but whose baby was no longer alive. She went inside for treatment and evacuation of the dead fetus. A young lady who had a heart rate of 160 and was apparently dehydrated. She went inside for rehydration with IV fluids.

I think we saw over 400 people today. The one that I will always remember was the young lady, about 30 years old who came to my station this afternoon complaining of stomach pain. I examined her and didn’t find any acute problem. I told her that often times stomach pain is caused by stress. I asked if she had pain after she ate. She told the interpreter that she hadn’t eaten today. I asked if it was because of the pain or because she didn’t have anything to eat. She had nothing to eat. I called the doctor over and related her story to him because I wasn’t sure what to do. Then I totally lost it. Of course her stomach hurt, she hadn’t eaten and was hungry. The doctor sent me off to take a break and get myself together again while he finished with the patient. Tomorrow there will be a food distribution station beside the clinic.

When I got back to the Guest House, one of the other workers asked if I had a good day. I had to think about that for a while. Was it good? It was hot and exhausting physically, mentally and emotionally. There were more people asking for care than we could treat. We ran out of some medications that we really needed. Chronic conditions went untreated – like diabetes, hypertension, and a 12-year-old with a wicked heart murmur. But I was able to begin to do what I came here to do – help a few hurting people. So in that sense, yes it was a good day.