Haiti- The Journey
Back home again after a week that changed my life a little more. I had to go back to my regular job the morning after we came back and that was kind of a shock. After taking care of people that were not demanding and were grateful for anything you did for me, my empathy level for the ER population was below zero….
The journey started on Monday, February 1st. There was a meeting scheduled at the hospital were we would be briefed about our trip, and would meet everybody on the team. All the paperwork that needed to be done, including a waver for the hospital (because unfortunately they did not want to be involved in this in the first place…), copies of our passports, emergency contacts etc. The plan was to leave early the next morning around 8 AM.
Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate. Now I live in the South…usually not too cold in the winter, but this winter was a real one. So there was concern about de-icing the plane. So at 6:15AM we were told that the flight had to be postponed until noon, and then we would get a new update. Luckily, we were able to leave and finally took off around 2PM. The flight was smooth and we got to the Bahamas about 3 hours later. We stayed in Nassau in a very luxurious hotel, and the next morning we took of to the airport for the last leg of our trip.
From the airport in Les Cayes, Haiti it was about an hour or so ride on a mostly unpaved road to Hospital Lumiere in Bonnefin, up the mountain. We arrived around 2:30 PM and were shown the guesthouse. Since we had to leave our luggage behind in the Bahamas, due to weight limitation on the plane, we didn’t have a lot to unpack. We changed into scrubs and straight to work. I was going to take over from a nurse that would be leaving the next day. She gave me the quick tour and report on the most critical patients.
