Haiti - Day 13

Final thoughts from Haiti...

Tomorrow is not only my last day at Hospital Universite Etas D’Haiti, but it is International Medical Corps last day as well. The emotions are so unbelievably mixed, as we look back at all that we have seen and done here and realize that although we have done so much, there is so much more that we wish we could continue to do. But, our work is finished – now, we leave behind a Hospital that is exactly the same as we found it, and take what experiences we have had here and live our lives just a little bit differently.

We have just two patients left in the ICU. The only ICU in Haiti will officially close tomorrow. All of the other 16 patients either died, or went home to die with their family so they don't have to pay the morgue. One patient is a 20 year old kid with a neck mass so large that it is protruding through his skin, and has compressed his airway down to the size of a straw. Each day it gets bigger, and each day we try to provide the family with some hope that a throat surgeon will fix him. But we know that the likelihood of that happening is next to nothing. TOmorrow he will go with his family and try to somehow get to the Dominican Republic to find a surgeon there. Meanwhile, all the way across the room you can hear him gasping for air with every breath.

Our other patient is a young man with a brain mass. Well, we think he has a mass based upon his symptoms, but we don't actually know with 100% certainty because we haven't see a CT Scan yet. His parents, who are there with him 24 hours a day, sold some of their personal belongings and spent their life savings to be able to afford the $250 to get a CT Scan for their son. We strongly urged them to not do this, as it will not, unfortunately, change any outcome, as there are no neurosurgeons in the entire country. So even if he does have a brain mass, he will still just go home with his family to die.

This is the kind of stuff we have seen on a daily basis. How can any of this be acceptable? But we didn't come here thinking that we could change these problems. These problems existed long before the earthquake, and will keep right on happening.

90,000. That is the number of patients we saw and treated since January. That's more than a busy trauma ER sees in one year. Many we saved. Many we didn't.

But - in all honesty, despite all of the good we have done and the hope we have given and the lives we have touched, we are leaving this place exactly how we found it. Nothing has changed. Nothing we contributed has been sustainable. But you can't have sustainable change without societal change...and the societal problems in this country are hundreds of years in the making, and will take another hundred to fix.

And as i'm typing this, it's pouring rain outside. Right now, millions are hovered in shoddy tents with dirt floors and blankets for beds. And I'm in my air conditioned hotel room on a kind sized bed listening to my IPod. Life just isn't fair.