Jen Watters Mission to Haiti
Tuesday, May 11th, at 8:57pm
So I forgot to post this on the 3rd when I wrote it, then I couldn’t find it – turns out I had accidently deleted it and it was hiding in my “trash” folder – oops!! I guess my brain was on vacation too!!
Hello everyone!! Bonswa tout moun!!
I was thinking that I should have sent out my email on Saturday this week, since we had the day off, but the power was not really cooperating. Yesterday was my travel day and now I am on my little vacation in Les Cayes in the South of Haiti. I will tell you a little bit about the past week and then save my vacation stories for next week, but I will tell you it has been wonderful so far!!

This past week, I spent helping out of the other expats in a large hospital in Carrefour called Diquini. It is a 7th Day Adventist hospital and has lots of American doctors and nurses volunteering there, including teams of plastic and orthopedic surgeons. So they keep the OR’s very busy and have lots of pre-op and post-op patients that fill up three rooms on the first floor and overflow into the hall ways. There are also several patients on the second floor that are pretty complicated and staying longer, and in need of therapy too. Then outside the hospital are several large tents with maybe 40-50 people staying out there, and we see several of them too.
My job for the week was to work on the first floor and see the post-op patients and also help with the outpatient orthopedic clinic. There were two other American PT’s who were just visiting for the week and they were a big help. It was really interesting but also very challenging in that some of the patients were only in the hospital for 3 days total including their operation, so we didn’t get much time to work with them. On Monday when I got there, there weren’t even names above the patient’s beds, so they were identified by their location (tricky, since they were always moving around) and their diagnosis: for example “the guy in the hall with the cast and the girlfriend” or “the boy with the heel problem in the dirty room (patients with some kind of infection: MRSA, etc)” My goal for the week was just to make sure that we got the patients registered with us before they left, so we could follow up with them after they left the hospital, then just to make sure they got their crutches and were safe with getting around before they left. The staff was really great though and they were always willing to listen to me and work with me, which helped a lot. There was one little old lady – 80 years old!! Who I met on Monday as her family was getting ready to take her home. She had been in a car accident and had a broken leg with an external fixator – someone had given her a walker but her hand was all swollen and painful – when I called the doctor over he got an xray and sure enough she had a broken bone in her hand! So they kept her another day until I could bring her a wheelchair!! It was crazy!
There were a couple other patients that really touched my heart this week, even with all of them being in and out. One who needs lots of prayers is named Kettely. She had an amputation after the earthquake that became infected and never healed. She has already had multiple revisions. They brought her in for another one about a week and a half ago and did a skin flap on another wound that she had on her thigh. She is a single mom with 5 kids. Four of the kids are staying with family out in the country. Her oldest daughter Ketya, who’s 16, is staying with her in the hospital to take care of her. She is such a sweet girl and is having to deal with so much. On Thursday they had to rush her mom back into surgery because she developed an infection under the flap and had puss pouring out of the wound. I saw Ketya sitting on her mom’s cot in the hallway and she looked so sad and scared. No one had told her what was happening. I gave her a big hug and she just started sobbing. She said she was so worried because “everyone keeps going into surgery and gets better except my mom.” I told her that she has great doctors and nurses and that they are going to keep working to help her mom get better. I wish I could have said more, but on Friday I talked to the nurse practitioner and she said the surgery had gone very well and they got everything cleaned out and are hopeful that the flap will take now and be okay. So please keep Kettely and Ketya in your prayers.
This week, really was a rough week for me. I really was starting to feel so tired. But God is so Good. Bon Dye Bon. In the moments when we are most weak, He is strong. It is in these moments that I realize I can do nothing on my own, but it is His strength that sustains me and His work that He is doing through me.
And now, I have this wonderful gift of four days off and it has been amazing so far!! I will tell you all about it next week! For now, please keep everyone back in Port-au-Prince in your prayers!! I love you all and miss you!!