A Delightful Team Effort for the Haitian Donkey and Friends

Hi All:

I never cease to be amazed and thank the Lord for the great people He sends to help here. Of course, I am enjoying my time with my little brother, Butch, as this is the 3rd year he has accompanied me and seems to find plenty to do. We are exhausted at night, but enjoy sharing the little time in the evenings together. Dan, Duane, Ruth, Theresa, Sam, Harris Rotman and Keith are long time regulars and have the ropes down very well and are, as usual, able to multitask and accomplish incredible amounts of work each day, of which the Haitians stand in awe, that people would just do this for others (without the usual expected return favors some day, I think that is the definition God uses for generosity, doing something for someone else that cannot possibly repay you, like Jesus has done for us on the cross, truly awesome, of course).

Doug Brink has been here before and now brought his son. The two, with help from Theresa and a Haitian coworker, have converted the termite eaten storage closets/cupboards into first class areas. I have worked together with Theresa for years at Georgetown Medical Center and she is an invaluable help at Sunset and is great at making sure I get plenty of food here, but maybe I am learning about a new side of her. She has been helping in the critter infested rooms in our place of work and residence and last night, Butch went to bed to see a note written on a paper on his pillow, wishing him a good night’s sleep and surrounded with cockroaches. He ascertained that it was feminine writing and, by process of elimination of the other 3 ladies, deduced she had left him the savory surprise. I assured him that she was too refined to do so, but when I asked her later today, she just smiled and said her brothers might differ with my opinion. Will check with Marge and Harold Punter when I get home to see if she is the likely culprit.

Tom VanderKodde brought his wife along to slave and sweat in the project and Dave Grifhorst, another returnee, brought his son, Paul along. Dan Boerman hauled his brother in law, Mike, instead of his wife, Kim, and each person seems to sync well with each other in doing their tasks and working with the Haitian crews we have hired to help move the 38 projects our taskmaster has assigned to the crew under him. Ido is new to the crew, though certainly not to Haiti, his home for a couple decades, but Shelby Rotman (a returnee who is responsible for keeping the web site up to date, a great help for those of us too old to handle that) can outwork many guys and doesn’t seem to let anything stop her, sort of like her grandfather, Harris, who has come for years also. So, all in all, a most greatly appreciated team and their work ethic is a testimony all by itself to the Haitians who notice everything. They had a nice dinner at the Wrays this evening, I had thoughts of going with them, but surgery just doesn’t seem to consider time management a high priority.
Speaking of surgery, I finally did, with some gentle prodding, get my surgeon in Pittsburgh, Dr. Bartlett, to give me his opinion of the questionable spots on my CT scan of December 17, 2014. He would like to repeat it in the normal 3 months (already scheduled on March 25) and then consider options. I feel great and am not eager to undergo another multi-shift surgical marathon any earlier than I need to, especially if we only get 8 months of clear CT scans out of it.
So far, have been able to do 29 surgeries, 10 of them hysterectomies, several exploratory laparotomies, unfortunately all for cancer and not curable, plus took out a huge rectal cancer today in an 84 year old gentleman, not curative, but he was obstructed and will buy him time, hopefully, and maybe by then he will be open to the colostomy option for egress of solid waste. I took off a golf ball-sized keloid on the earlobe of a 13 year old girl today, they do pierce ears here, but hygiene and the keloid scarring often take their toll on the results with somewhat less than beautiful looking results.
I ended up doing the Gutwein’s (a family who works with Loving Shepard Ministries) gardener at the end of the day. He worked for them Monday and Tuesday, then was hauled in to see me on Wednesday by his family. I asked him what his problem was, he just stated that he had back pain, normal for his work as a gardener, and he didn’t see what all the fuss was about. I asked the family why he was in the surgical clinic and they pulled his pants leg up to show a hole on his anterior leg about 12 inches by 6 inches and 2 inches deep with exposed bone and at least 50 maggots worming their way around the dead tissue. I asked him how long he had had this problem and he said for 4 days, really? The Haitians always tend to pretend that things are more acute than they are, to be sure we are properly shocked into action, but 4 days would be a stretch for this hole. We took him back to the OR to debride the lesion and drill holes into the exposed bone. I was definitely in the minority in my opinion that the maggots are just helping clean up the dead tissue, everyone else was grossed out to see these critters crawling on his open leg. Hopefully we can clean up the wound and get some granulation tissue to grow out of the drilled holes so that we can flip a skin graft over the open area.
Since the merchant’s lean-to stand across the street is up and running, Mondesir, Duane and I had a meeting with the merchants to inform them that they were no longer allowed to set up shop in or on the hospital grounds, that they were to keep the strip we made for them cleaned up, and assigned 3 of the ladies to be the committee to enforce the rules. As we finished with them, the motorcycle taxis who always park under the tree next to this place tried to convince Duane to build them a similar hanger/lean to for them to enjoy a respite from the sun and rain. Haitians are not at all bashful about asking for handouts, favors, money, etc. It sometimes can be a bit uncomfortable for us, but we have to understand the huge difference in our cultures.
So, we are winding up our week at the hospital, the other 16 team members will stay another week, though I will do surgery on Saturday, pack up and head north to Cap Haitian, anywhere from 9 to 15 hours (the last from Rod Wray, who is a faster driver than I, so I respectfully am considering the timing options) to encounter the physicians in charge of the residency program up there and seeing what alternatives we can negotiate to help secure the future of Centre de Sante Lumiere. We greatly appreciate your prayers for health, safety and God’s Great Wisdom in our dealings with the folks there, that His will will be done and we may make the right decisions.

In His Service,

Bill and the rest of the 18 laborers