Foreigners at Pierre Payen Hospital: Mamba babies and medical specialists

Scuttling, scraping daggers on the tin roof. The rats are active again. The sound makes me cringe and uneasily eyeball the cracks in the cement walls of our tiny house.

It’s a cool, mournful evening after the first rain in a week.

I feel stressed out today—this week has a sense of urgency, especially as my time left in Haiti dwindles. The clinic is in serious need of an organizational overhaul, and not just for supplies and storage. The staff is incredibly busy, but without an administrator, it is not operating efficiently. I’m praying it will get better, because today reception turned away several sick babies and elderly people. The doctor was home in Port-au-Prince with a cold, leaving only two nurses to see all patients.

There is a team of American doctors and Canadian nurses visiting the hospital in Pierre Payen until Sunday, including a pediatric urologist and orthopedic surgeon.

Caroline and I have a lot of time to pay to Haitian waiting rooms.

We woke up earlier than usual to rally the moms of babies in the Medika Mamba program requiring extra medical care. It was hotter than ever, and even with the raspy air conditioning, the truck reeked of sweat.

I hardly notice the smell anymore, this pungent perfume of hot bodies. But today it made me pine for ice water and a swimming pool… And some Febreeze.

Perre Payen Hospital has a homey guesthouse and a large, well-constructed facility with high walls and breezy ventilation. Once we were admitted past the guard at the iron gates and thrust among waiting patients (some sitting, most standing, but all cramped in the hallway clutching their files), a nurse arrived to sort the babies to specialty doctors and therapists based on their needs.

The hospital examination rooms were roomy, but sparsely supplied, painted in the surprisingly antiseptic hue of yellowing newspaper. The orthopedic doctor had only an exam table, a wheelchair, basic orthopedic wraps and an x-ray machine. The urologist had an examination table and a packet of sterile gloves, seeing patients behind blue surgery drapes pinned above the doorway like flapping laundry.

The foreign staff walked fiercely from room to room, hair frizzed and sweat rolling. It was funny to watch them move while Haitians patiently waited, falling their faces with manila envelopes containing scribbles of their insides and histories of their pain. More than once, I was grabbed and asked to translate. I am sorry I had to refuse them. I am trying to hard to wrap my brain around Creole, even with my French language background.

James is a 13-month-old with an ectopic bladder. His condition requires multiple specialized surgeries to repair his bladder and reconstruct his genitalia. He lives in Sous Bogne, the little community below Canaan, and in a previous post I talked about my visit to his home with Katie my first week in Haiti. He has been rejected from two hospitals in the states already for lack of funding, especially because he will need a lot of recovery time and after care following his surgeries. As the pediatric urologist examined him, we were told nothing new… except that he is at the perfect age for surgery and that his condition is treatable. The doctor said it will be almost impossible to treat him in Haiti, and offered his contact information for his hospital in Nebraska.

Please pray that James’ surgery will be accepted and covered by this doctor’s hospital. He will need to stay in the states for a while, accompanied by someone from Canaan because it will take months for his mother’s birth certificate to be found in the Haitian national archives. James needs the surgery now, and Haitian time is slow time. I wanted to throw up my hands and scream when the doctor explained the specific microscopes her needed for an effective surgery and recovery.

Haiti doesn’t have this type of medical care readily available, especially not for babies in poverty.

A little girl, Gueraldine, has had severe joint malformations. She was discontinued from the Medika Mamba after failing to gain weight, but she’s still scrawny and malnourished. After she fell in February, her wrists began to jut abnormally, which was formerly diagnosed as untreated breaks.

The orthopedic surgeon who examined Gueraldine today gave some clarity—it’s a congenital condition, and the x-rays revealed missing bones in her hands and wrists. The doctor and physical therapist were able to mold her two removable splints out of casting. It was painful to watch the baby scream as they pushed her angular wrists into normal positions and wrapped them tightly. However, it was a relief to learn simple stretches the mother could perform to aid in proper growth and development. Plus, the baby doesn’t need extensive surgery, which was a relief to the mother and us—less letdowns and hoop jumping this way.

The Haitian doctor Jean Robert was expecting a pediatric cardiologist to be with the team of Americans, so the 5-year-old requiring heart surgery for her defect was turned away. She’s been waiting for 2 years now to see a pediatric cardiologist with the means to operate in Haiti. Unfortunately, the specialty equipment is difficult to come by, especially for short-term doctors and surgeons.

Since the team does have a general doctor to see all the patients that don’t fall into the available specialty categories, there’s another baby at Rousseau with a chest and lung malformation will still need to be looked at, although our hopes of specialist treatment are dashed. After the Mamba mobile clinic Wednesday, we’ll be bringing the mom and the x-rays we obtained in St. Marc to wait once again in Pierre Payen.

Waiting, waiting and more waiting. It’s so difficult for me to sit still and accept that this is how life rolls in Haiti.

People die waiting.

Caroline and I vented with M&Ms and danced the cha cha with some of the younger girls, Magdalena and Jessica. It was my first genuine smile of the day, besides entertaining the babies in the sticky hospital heat. Thank you to chocolate and my fiesty Haitian friends.

It’s only 8:30, but I want to just lie in bed and decompress. I need a massage, but I'll settle with some IB profen for now. The mosquitoes are munching.