Whats Ed Up To Now

Friday morning March 18 2011

2011-03-18T06:34:00.005-05:00

I am not really good at taking the time to write my blog on this trip. We are seeing over 300 patients per day and working till near 6 PM so my time to write is limited. This is another great team with lots of dedicated workers who really care for the Haitians. We have had a few starving babies. One yesterday was 10 days old and even though Mom;s milk had come in, the baby was being fed some crushed spaghetti and sweet tea. This was her 4th child and you would have expected her to learn to fee babies by now. We also had a 47 year old lady with several children find out that she was pregnant. We did 3 separate tests as she refused to believe it. We are going through lots of formula and Dr. Nelson has been busy obtaining it for us. We will be sticking close to the clinic on the weekend due to the election and also because Aristides return to Haiti may cause some unrest. I hate it that the new people will not get to see Jacmel, the beach at Ti Moulage, the market at Cayes Jacmel, or some of the other scenery.

I hope you enjoy the pictures. Time to get some breakfast. Thanks for the prayers and good wishes

Wednesday March 16

2011-03-16T21:48:00.002-05:00

First off, Happy St Patrick's day. We plan to celebrate at Son-Son's with green Okra and lots of rum and Prestige. I doubt that it will be green. It is now 10:00 PM and I have just a few moments to blog. We say some where over 300 patients again today and did not finish till after 6 PM. Martha and I are still doing great and this will be a great mission. We have has lots of help from Linda Bryan and Matthew Re. Kate McGinn, Barb Smith, and Greta Thibideau also helped us. Bill Cicala and Kristy Rashid asked if they could help and they bit off a bit more that they would have liked. Please look at the FOTCOH blog for some updates from Carol Miller and some pictures from Holly's camera. Reg, Bill and Gregg are headed for bed, as I should also be doing. Just out of the shower and thought I would say hello. This is another great team and I am enjoying the experience as always. We will NOT be going to the beach ion Sunday due to possible problems as we pass by several polling places. We will most likely just go to the beach beneath the Cyvadier Plage Hotel. The hotel will also host our Saturday evening dinner.
Keep those prayers coming.

Hello from Haiti 3-15-11

2011-03-15T20:13:00.002-05:00

Hello from Haiti. For our first day here we saw 324 patients. I am sure that is a new record in lots of ways. It is the first time that I can recall that we were ready to open at 7 AM on day 1 of a clinic. We were not quite ready in the pharmacy but survived.
Another first was a prayer service at opening. Boyer wanted to lead a moment of silence in honor of our team mate, Gary Paulson. Gary made several trips to Haiti with FOTCOH and passed away over the winter. He was a dedicated worker and a great friend. Boyer, our main man in Haiti, asked the crowd to observe a moment of silence and pointed to his ears so they would understand who he was referring to. Gary had a hearing aid in both ears and they seemed to know him from that gesture. After the moment of silence, one lady in the crowd began to say the Rosary in Creole. The prayer, with responses from the crowd, lasted over 30 minutes and those team member who witnessed it were in awe.

Our flights here were uneventful except for the volunteer who had problems with American Airlines. It seems they did not record her credit card when she made her reservation. Long story-short: she ended up in Puerto Rica sleeping on the floor at the airport in PR, flyibg the next day to Santo Domingo and then on to Port-au-Prince. She arrived there 1 hour before us. We lost one bag, which is now in PAP to be picked up.

There are some problems with the January inventory but we will also survive that problem. Team is wonderful to work with. We have 4 rookies and they fit in very well. There is lots of laughter and merriment outside as I write this note.

I hope to add some pictures tomorrow but for now, I will head for bed.

Haiti Photos

2010-03-28T16:39:00.001-05:00

Hello from Peoria
Thanks to Heather Smith, we have photos posted on a community website
www/photobucket.com Username: MarchTeam 2010 Password: fotcoh

Enjoy!

Thursday March 25, 2010

2010-03-25T20:14:00.002-05:00

Hello from Cyvadier
Supper is finished, bags are packed, inventory mostly complete, showered, sipping some nice red wine, and finishing up a wonderful team experience. We managed to see over 220 patients in out=r last half day. Lots of little ones. I am still enjoying making the older men and women giggle when I snatch their dossiers out of their hands as I prepare to fill the medication orders.
I ant to especially thank Carl Mikota for being a spectacular pharmacist and putting up with the old man these two weeks. We made quite a team and I would love to work with him again soon. I also want to that the rest of the team for all their help and support. And, yes, I will still be sending out some more of those emails that you grew to love.
This will be short tonight. The luggage truck is on it's way. We will get to fly from Jacmel to Port-au-Prince via Tortug (19 passengers) and MAF (5 passengers) planes. This tome I am on the small plane and that will be exciting.
We are all excited to be headed for home. We arrive in Miami sometime around 3 PM EDT and should be home by 10:30 PM CDT.
Thank you all for your prayers, comments, and support.
I hope to post pictures when I get home and have a better internet connection.

Wednesday March 24,2010

2010-03-24T20:17:00.001-05:00

After another great meal from Ann, the team is relaxing. We saw over 430 patients today and have now seen over 2525 patients with one half day remaining. Pharmacy finished at 4:35 PM so we must be getting the hang of it. We expect around 170 tomorrow. Heather is our “bean counter.”
Today was Dr Nelson’s birthday but it slipped by without fanfare. We will celebrate it tomorrow at lunch. He did show off pictures of his new baby today. The boy is quite precious.
Several interesting cases were presented but I will not take away from the FOTCH blog. Kevin, our physical therapist, paid a visit to St Michelle hospital today. There is a group from Canada by the name of Healing Hands who are working there under tents and with pretty primitive conditions. They had paid us a visit last night and invited Kevin to come for a tour. At the same time, we transported a very sick young man to the hospital with possible meningitis.
We were given instructions for our return to Jacmel airport for the flight to Port-au-Prince on Friday. We will likely have to be at the airport around 7 AM. Our flight to Miami is somewhere around Noon on Friday but the Port-au-Prince airport is probably the slowest place to check into an airline that I have ever experienced. We will likely stand in line fo almost two hours in front of the American Airlines ticket counter. I am also told that we will have to remove our shoes three times and will not be able to carry any gels, toothpastes, shampoos, or lotions in our carry-on luggage. We will need to transport all of the bags and boxes back to Illinois and Washington for future team use.
In spite of the large numbers of patients, pharmacy has only run out of iodized salt and amoxicillin capsules. That, to me, is quite amazing. Dr Nelson found a great infant formula in Jacmel at $ 3.00 USD per can compared to the $ 25.00 USD per can for a similar item in the USA. Plus there were no shipping charges. The formula was made in France. I had a fear it might have been from China.
Computer work continues. I have cleaned up Dick’s computer, Boyer’s computer, Geral Jean’s computer and now Dr Nelson’s computer.
I need to close this, post it, and help with the FOTCOH blog. I may try another post tomorrow. Thanks for all the great comments.

Hello to Donna

2010-03-23T20:14:00.002-05:00

I tried to call you tonight on Skype. Checked all settings and my equipment seemed to be working okay. I do not know why you could not hear me. I just wanted to say hello. No big deal. I will see you on Friday.

Note to Donna

2010-03-22T18:17:00.002-05:00

Yes, free hotmail would be a good way to contact me but this is working and I love hearing from you. You may get another phone call tomorrow night. I know this is a busy night for you. Very tired today. I was able to get a 1/2 hour nap after linch that helped. I hope for an earlier bedtime tonight.
Love you very much

2010-03-22T17:55:00.002-05:00

2010-03-22T17:52:00.000-05:00

2010-03-22T17:48:00.000-05:00

Weekend in Haiti

2010-03-22T17:41:00.001-05:00

Saturday night- Sunday morning

Sorry, I have been a bit negligent on the blog. When I get done with all my duties, I read my emails, check up on Facebook, and head for bed. No, I am still not sleeping well. I fall asleep, wake up when the power switches, wake up later with leg cramps, fall back asleep, and wake up at 5 or 5:30 AM when the lights come on in the kitchen. It is hinted that I avail myself of the I-Stat machine to see if there is an imbalance in my blood chemistry. Hmmm, do I really want Reg to stick me??
We saw over 350 patients on Friday and over 150 on our short day today. The last 24 patients may have not needed to be seen but the 25’th one really needed help. And our dentist, Kate, is pulling teeth and is as busy as we are in the pharmacy.
We walked to the beach at Cyvadier Plaz on Friday night. My legs were barking but we took a new route past the voodoo temple. It was quite interesting. I will try to post pictures when I can get the card reader to work once again. I had never been there before. I stopped at the hotel to see Christophe but he was busy. I did meet some of the Canadian rehab team and hope to talk with them Sunday. Next we walked to Son-son’s bar and ended up walking home in the dark. All of our shoes got muddy and Stephanie even managed to fall into the mud. I hope you are following the PNN blog through FOTCOH.org. Several team members are blogging and we are trying to post some pictures.
Good morning. It is now Sunday and the forecast for Peoria is freezing rain while here in Cyvadier it is clear, sunny, humid and only 80 degrees. The EDH power went off around 8 PM and we sat in the dark for several minutes while we scrambled for flashlights to be able to turn on the generator. On the second floor, some of the team played a noisy card game. On the third floor, the outside balcony was lined with chairs and all of the problems of the world were solved. Also on the third floor, the computers were going full blast and the library was filled with readers. It was nice to relax a bit. We were expecting a voodoo parade last night by the locals as Easter is approaching but we did not get to see and hear that special treat.
At Ti Moulage, Bill tried his hand at body surfing, thanks to an errant wave. He managed to meet the rocks with his chest, nose, and forehead. Here again, I hope to post some pictures. The FOTCOH band showed up at the beach and played for a short while. They seem to know when we are there each time.
I had to get in the middle of a loud argument in the pharmacy lobby yesterday. Belony was shouting at some one and that some one was shouting back. The argument moved outside and seemed about to escalate into a fight. Several people restrained Belony and the other angry man. I approached the man (first “Blanc” on the scene) and told him we would have to seek out Papa Dick. I walked him around the building, out to the gate, and back to the building looking for Dick. We avoided the pharmacy and I started upstairs to seek out Dick. Andreta, on of our kitchen girls, signaled with hand gestures that I should not bother Dick with this matter. After a few minutes of stalling, I came back out and sat him down on a bench. It turns out that he is now living in Seattle, Washington and is an artisan there. About three years ago he stayed at Belony’s home with his wife and wanted a refund of $ 250.00 Haitian Dollars. After I felt he had calmed down, I escorted him out of the grounds. Leave it to me to get in the middle if things.

Okay.o it is now late Monday afternoon. Where did the time go? I have been trying t get photos uploaded to the FOTCOH blog and the internet has not been the most cooperative. I just love Hughes net-not. I finally rebooted the entire system and it worked this morning but did not work last night.
Sunday we had a great breakfast of bacon and pancakes thanks to Bill and Kent. The prayer service wet well, I think. Man of the team headed for Jacmel to survey the damage. I managed a short nap the back to computer clean up.. I have Papa Dick’s done and Boyer’s done but still have Gerald Jeans and Nelson’s to work on. Nelson came to work today and promised to show me pictures of his new baby and then forgot me. Poor me!
There are a lot of sun burned team members from the weekend and many of them are presently on a hike u the mountain. Kevin, our physical therapist, came in to help in the pharmacy today. Pretty soon, I will have the whole team “doing drugs in Haiti”. Kev in and I did meet with the Canadian Rehab team at the hotel on Sunday night at dinner. They were supposed to stop by when they got done today at 2 PM. They start work at 9 AM. That would be nice. Christophe was very busy at the hotel during dinner but the food was excellent. The damage to his hotel breaks my heart.
My last patients today were very small babies whose mother and father were killed in the earthquake. Very sad.
My sponsor child showed up today and I loaded him down with some toys. I just realized that I failed to give him the cards from my grandchildren. He always manages to show up when I am the busiest.
Think I’ll close and post this. I am missing home quite a bit today.

My helper today

2010-03-19T20:33:00.003-05:00

The above is a picture of a boy who wandered into the stock room as I was working on some meds. He had been locked out of the pharmacy about 10 minutes earlier because he kept wandering under our feet as we worked. I thought he had left. He proceeded to unpack a box of meds and hand them to me. I stacked them into a column as I tought he would want to knock down as my grand children would do. It rained this morning but we still managed to see 310 patients and there was no one left outside tonight. Met with Canadian rehab team at hotel and hope to hook up with them tomorrow. Lots of interesting cases today. I walked to the Cyvadier Plaz hotel after we closed and met with Christophe and also the Canadian rehab team/ We had rum and cokes at Son-sons. He is out of Prestige.
Bed time again. I have not been sleeping well.

Morning post

2010-03-19T05:58:00.003-05:00

March pictures

2010-03-18T20:41:00.000-05:00

Thursday March 18, 2010

2010-03-18T20:33:00.003-05:00

Only 345 patients today so you can see we are just loafing here. Ha. We even had two show up in their truck after closing and we will see them tomorrow. My friends, Nego and Ellen brought them from Seguin. Ooops, need to make a mad dash for the outside as it is raining here at 8:20 PM and the laundry is still on the lines. It has looked like rain all day long and there was a cool breeze when we closed the pharmacy around 5 PM and I sat out on the veranda and enjoyed a glass of white wine. This time it costs $ 6.00 USD instead of $ 10.00 USD. I’ll drink to that.
I hope to post some team members pictures along with this post.
Reg is settling in to the lab and Bill was also in there today. Carl and I have really enjoyed the extra help in the pharmacy. Matt, our medical student, came in today and did drugs with us and I had to pull the mooning joke on him.
I am not supposed to talk about Amanda’s cough so I will not say a word about her Reese’s chasers.
Ann is keeping us well fed, Tonight’s birthday celebration for Debbie went very well and the smoke detectors remained silent. Oh, what smoke detectors??
Tonight’s team complaint for the FOTCOH BOD is that there are not enough chairs outside on the third floor balcony for a team meeting.. Sorry, bit of an inside joke.
Pharmacy is still finding items in various boxes. Today the two cases of Penicillin VK 125mg.5ml appeared. That was about 1 hour after we needed a bottle for a child. I am still looking for the furosemide and I may try to purchase some tomorrow in Jacmel. That is the only item we are short of at this time.
People are here wanting to use this computer so I’ll say good night.
Oh yes, we are unable to view the blog at www.fotcoh.org from here for "server error:.

Wednesday March 17, 2010

2010-03-17T21:25:00.001-05:00

Happy end of Saint Patrick’s Day. There was little celebration here as we saw 314 patients and I finished around 5: 30 PM. Guess I should expect that with the 8 providers. The pharmacy bench was long all afternoon and at the end we had some large and sick families.
We celebrated St Patty with some cookies and one large cookie thanks to our fine cook, Ann. She tried a new recipe on us this evening and it was very delicious. There was a portion for the meat lovers, vegetarians, and diabetics.
In late breaking news, we managed to get the I-Stat machine working thanks to Debbie Nord from Bloomington.
I should report that all of the team is back to good health and we are having a good time and caring for a lot of people.
I will close this tonight and get some rest.

Tuesday March 16, 2010

2010-03-16T20:04:00.002-05:00

Wow, We started at 10:30 AM and finally finished at around 6:30 PM. We managed to see 223 patients in that time and were minus two physicians. One was tide up in meetings with some visiting dignitaries. The other was a little under the weather. No names to mention and, please do not become concerned. First day is always a challenge for all of us and we overcame every one of them. It seems extremely muggy this time maybe I am just getting older. As usual, we are eating very well. Bill Cicala and I are taking turns getting up at 2 AM to switch from EDH electricity to the Cat generator. Reg is in the lab, sticking small children's fingers and learning from Kevin. Heather is any place and every place where there is work and ended the day in the pharmacy as did Sherri. I promised not to report that they did drugs in Haiti or had anything to do with mooning. Carl is a wonderful help in the Pharmacy and I do hope he is enjoying his time. Our other newbie, Debbie, also seems to be adjusting to the heat, confusion, and fun times here in Haiti. All of the old timers are doing well and this is a marvelous team. Sorry I did not get he pictures downloaded. It is rapidly approaching this old mans bed time.

Monday March 16,2010

2010-03-15T20:54:00.002-05:00

It is almost 9 PM. We are winding down from a long day. Encountered delays at Miami leaving. Had to circle PAP to land due to traffic. That was a shock. It took forever to get our luggage in the old, hot air freight terminal. One tote did not make it. We hope it will turn up soon. I flew Tortug to Jacmel. Hot and humid flight. Glad to see clinic is okay. Saw lots of tents in PAP and quite a few in Jacmel and several damaged buildings. Had lunch and began to unpack the freight that had arrived. Luggage truck finally arrived after flat tire along the way. Bags will wait till morning before we finish unpacking. Some pills packed today. I am tired and heading for bed after I try to get FOTCOH blog posted. I understand that WEEK played my interview from yesterday at the Peoria airport. I hope I did not screw up too much.

Love to all. Thanks for the prayers

Packing Party

2010-03-05T15:51:00.002-06:00

Our team packing party is this coming Sunday afternoon, March 7, 2010. We will have 14 of the 24 team members coming from Peoria. There are 3 coming from Arizona, 1 from Minnesota, 1 from Montana, and 5 from the Seattle Washington area. The team is blessed with many physicians, nurses, a physical therapist, two pharmacists, and several non medical members. Most of the team has been on missions in the past so this will be great group to work with.
I plan to update this blog as I have time before the trip, during the trip, and after the trip.
I am always happy to report on various team members so let me know who I can spread some rumors about.
The outlook in Haiti remains bleak. I am wondering what we will find when we get there.

Thomas

2010-01-18T21:52:00.000-06:00

Please contact me at edmonroe316@msn.com

Haiti Earthquake

2010-01-18T10:26:00.002-06:00

The FOTCOH medical team for January is headed to Fort Lauderdale today and on to Cyvadier by charter planes. They hope to be operational by tomorrow. The need is so great there.
Dr Ron Bush and the Methodist Missions group from Michigan are trying to get to Mizak on Friday. They need supplies and medicines. If you want to help, please let me know.

Homeward bound at 3 AM

2009-07-24T03:25:00.000-05:00

Thursday evening July 23, 2009

My last post from Cyvadier is being written outside on the third floor balcony. The kitchen a/c is on but the team chatter is distracting. Inventory is done and partially posted on y computer. Our bags are packed and ready for the over night luggage truck. We will leave for PAP around 4 AM and, if the internet is up then, I’ll post this. We will be traveling by two vans so pleas pray for our sage travels. The Internet is not presently available. We had the wonderful meal of red beans and rice, covered in lobster, onions, tomatoes, and Haitian herbs. It is one of my favorites along with the black bean sauce over rice. We are headed to Boyer’s for some sort of a party, complete with the FOTCOH Band. That will be an interesting treat but I will be even more tired tomorrow, The Haitian workers chipped in and gave each one of us a personalized small painting/ It was a great gesture. We are all anxious to return home to our loved ones and our homes. This has been another great team experience. My helpers in the pharmacy have been outstanding again. Carol Steiner,
We ended up seeing a lot of patients today and our total exceeds 2400 patients. The last day was a frantic scramble but we survived. Eric even got a video of the “Grise Grind” where I have to compound a solution of Griseofulvin for the fungal patients. I wish there was a way to educate them to wash so that I would not have to treat so many fungal patients.
3 AM. It was some party at Boyer’s home. First, it is a very nice and clean home. Second, his step mother and his father prepared the food and beverage. We had a great 3 hours there at his home. Now it is time to finish packing and head for home. The new people have no idea what is in store for them on the ride home. I will post this and describe the rest of the day from Peoria. Thank you again for all of your comments and especially your prayers.

Wednesday July 22, 2009 evening

2009-07-23T05:20:00.000-05:00

Back from Son-son’s and the birthday celebration for Eric’s %$# . I’ll let you insert the number. The FOTCOG band showed up and the team danced and drank for quite awhile. The team drew quite a crowd of Haitians around Son-son’s gate watching the crazy Blanc’s. Tonight’s dinner was a special goat meal that the Haitian girls cooked for us. We have now seen over 2300 patients. I told the team hat I had only stocked medications for 2300 so the pharmacy would not be open tomorrow. I am such a jokester. Tomorrow will be another hard day. We will likely see around 175 patients, have lunch, and then do inventory. The word is that we have a party at Boyer’s tomorrow night so I’ll need to get my inventory entered and off to the September team, if possible, before I party. We will have to get up at 3 AM on Friday in order to drive to the airport in Port-au-Prince. That will be a memorable trip for the team as there are 365 turns between Jacmel and PAP through the mountains. In PAP they will see more of the poverty up close and personal.
It is after 9 PM and I am one tired guy so I’ll close this till morning.
Internet is up so I’ll send this post. It is our last day here. Sorry I have been unable to send more pictures. It takes so long to upload them.

Wednesday July 22, 2009 Lunch time

2009-07-22T16:49:00.000-05:00

I am dragging a bit today. I did get to bed at 9 PM but had a rough night. There were severely loud thunder crashes over night. I could not cool down in spite of holding the fan that I am using in my face. It might be that I can look towards Friday and also look back at the past two weeks work. We have another team member down with GI problems. Last night it was vomiting-today loose stools. Dr’s Sara and Ron have been busy.
We saw over 300 patients again yesterday and it seem like we have had that same number today by lunch time. There are lots of small children so I have to grind up Griseofulvin tablets to make up the needed dosages of the Griseofulvin suspension. It is a slow process.
We are getting close on many items and the next two periods will be tough. I do not want to leave many bags packaged. Ooops, I have now dozed off twice as I write this preparatory document for the blog. It does not bode well for the rest of the afternoon.
Now it is 5 PM and we finished at 4:30 PM. A young girl came in with a broken leg that seemed to take everyone to care for. The team is on edge today. I think that the work, the stress, the homesickness, and the heat have finally taken their toll. We have heard from Papa Dick and I understand that a conference is in order and soon as we have to call him back.
Team is off to the beach and I understand that we are going to Son-son’s tonight to celebrate Eric’s birthday. I have lots to do in preparation for inventory so this will be very short. I hope the internet is still up.

Haiti on a rainy Tuesday late afternoon

2009-07-21T17:47:00.000-05:00

It is nearly 6 PM and the rain will soon arrive over the mountains. I have been tracking this storm as it has come off the coast of Africa and we should experience it soon. I should go out to the patient waiting area and count the number of people for you who will spend the night in the cold and wet area. I have just heard that we served over 360 patients today. We saw somewhere around 350 yesterday. Many have been very tough and I urge you to read the blog at www.fotcoh.org for more details from other team members. I am especially touched by the snow cone story as it was repeated again today. Brother Nego and Ellen, My friends from Jacmel, came to the clinic this morning and we treated two of their friends. Nego and Ellen had been in the USA and were happy to be back in Haiti. I was also visited by my sponsor child, John Carrey Pantaleon but as usual, we were swamped in the pharmacy and I only had time to give him a back pack and some cars (machines). His eyes really began to light up at the machines. I asked Becky Novack to take our picture and hope to upload it soon. Some of the team members have just gone outside the gate to find out how much it would cost to feed all of the people stuck in the rain. We have seen so much malnutrition and starving people. You will never understand the problems until you see the dossiers with weight loss from clinic to clinic. It is simply awful. You, in America, have it so darn good. Even my sponsor child is NOT putting on weight for almost 1 year now. He still looks and acts healthy and I am grateful for that. The Internet is working and I need a shower before dinner. I was very happy to get a nice email from my wife today. I’ll be home soon! I really appreciate all of your comments and post them when I can. Please continue to keep us in your prayers.
Late addition for Mrs C: DC is not the sick one……

A tired guy on Monday

2009-07-21T05:29:00.002-05:00

I am very tired this morning. I got to bed at midnight last night and awoke at the usual 5 AM today. After the beach we sat around in the dining area visiting. I made several bags of microwave popcorn for the group. Boyer showed up and took a group of us to the Bee Club. That was quite an experience. Andreta was at the door selling alcohol. There were several young children present and that surprised us. The music was loud and the group of us who went to the club did a little dancing and people watching. I paid little attention to the time. It seemed that we stayed there about 1 hour. There was a $ 1.00 USD cover to get in to the club. The DJ did help us by speaking English some of the time. The music stopped and some sort of a program started so we left to return home. Not all of us could fit on the Toyota so we went to Son-son’s. He opened his gates for us to wait inside until the Toyota returned to pick us up. As I was preparing for bed, I was called out to assist with an IV for one of the team members. I will go as far as to say that it was a female. She had vomited 3 times and was quite nauseated. I’m sure I will pay for the late night all day today.
It is now almost 5 PM and time to sit and relax before dinner. Internet is busy-what else is new. We are so spoiled back home. Everyone gets very frustrated by this slow loading connection. I have no other answer except to say that it is not busy early in the mornings but slows down at noon and in the evening so I suspect that it is a satellite traffic issue.
We have another sick team member. His cough has finally caught up with him. He is being well cared for and is resting. Again, I am bound by the code of the mission not to cause any unneeded family worries.
We managed to see 327 patients today and we are starting to run low on certain items. Our September team will need to order Chewable Children’s Vitamins with Iron and lots of ace inhibitors. The bathroom vanity that I shipped over 1 month ago finally arrived today. Previous team members will get a chuckle out my note that the pharmacy sore room key was lost for a couple of hours today. Neva found it for me.
Internet slow. I'll publish this tomorrow.

Sunday July 19

2009-07-20T05:48:00.000-05:00

There are many still in bed at 7:30 AM. It must have been a late night for all. I finally turned in at 11:30 PM. Our meal at Cyvadier Plage was as good as ever. The only problem was that I did not get the meal that I ordered. Christophe, the owner, made a dessert similar to Bananas Foster and allowed me to help him to serve it. He tells me that a video was made during our March team visit and he tells me I have a starring role. I must find a copy of that video so see just how much of a fool I made of myself. The band showed up and we laughed and danced for quite awhile. I do not recall what time it was when we left the place.
Today is another hot and humid day here. Our prayer service will begin around 9 this morning. Jon, he cook, promises a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon. That will be a nice treat. We will leave for the beach around 1 PM. Some of the team found bargains in Jacmel yesterday. I am saving packing peanuts and bubble wrap for the team to use to transport their treasures.
We discovered a pinhole leak this morning in the water pumping system. We will have to wait until tomorrow for Louchard to come out and check it out.
The internet is running very slow but that allows me to prepare this and maybe do a better job of checking for spelling errors before I publish it. So far, no one has complained about my errors. Renel just arrived with news that we have patients expecting to be seen.
Ooops.. it is now 7 PM and we are back from the beach and just in time. It is pouring rain. The beach was as busy as ever. I am getting teased for my pink swim suit and pink t shirt that I am wearing. Everyone had a great time today at the beach. We ate lobster, grilled fish complete with head and eyes, pikle (a spicy cole slaw), fried plantains, rice & beans, Prestige, Rum and two bottles of wine that Ron picked up along the way to the beach. One surprise was the arrival of Edzsa, one of my pharmacy translators. He came to take us to meet his mother who lived down the beach from where we were at at Ti Moulage. Bruce, Carol, Becky Novak, and I trekked down the beach to a small home right on the beach. Some of us were smart enough to wear footwear. We met his mother and his sister and two of his cousins. That means that story that he lives in a home with 9 people and one bed. I observed two beds is not the real story. Ha!
We also had two Americans join us, One we met last night at the Cyvadier Plage and
the other, and was an at instructor from Marengo Iowa. We had a great time talking about the towns around Marengo from my childhood. It made me a bit homesick.
We just made it home before the storm only to find that we had locked a door for which we have left the key inside. Picture, if you can, using a wine opener (now why would I have a wine opener with me?) to break in. Gee, I wonder if Papa Dick is reading this?
Monday AM Internet working halfway

Saturday night July 18

2009-07-18T21:37:00.000-05:00

Today 178 patients came through the doors of the pharmacy today between 7:30 AM and 11:30 AM. So, if each patient gets a vitamin, Tylenol or Motrin, something for their acid that is 534 prescriptions. Add to that the one or two anti-hypertensive medications, one or two diabetic medications, a worm medication, a scabies treatment, maybe an antibiotic or an anti fungal medication and you have some idea what happens in the clinic pharmacy. To complete the picture, add providers coming in for consultations, volunteers using the pharmacy sink for hand washings, and other major distractions to the mix. I do not know how better to describe what Becky Novack has described as organized chaos.
I have some very good news to report today. Sue Behrens, our team leader, came to me for something for rapid pain relief. I had something to give her in a liquid form that I’ll choose not to divulge on the blog. Sometime later, I was sitting out in the pharmacy waiting area placing labels on pill bags. Yes, I was cheating and sitting down. I can tell you that is a rare event. Two ladies came into the lobby with their dossiers. One of the ladies had been given a treatment and had her shoulder wrapped in an elastic bandage. However she was not able to close her blouse to cover her bare breast. I asked for someone to get the lady one of the diaper pins so she could have some modesty. I got up to look over her dossier and finally realized that this was the “January burn lady”. She was treated extensively by the January team and given supplies and instructions for follow up at the local hospital. They refused to treat her and she showed up in March and we had to start all over again. So every morning on the porch outside my door she was treated and it had to be very painful. He would not accept any pain medications and sat it the chair with a death grip on the chair and a grimace on her face. It is such a thrill for me to report her progress to you. I am tearing up as I write this part and have had a good cry of joy today.
Today is the day o choices for the team. Do I go to town and shop? Do I stay here and head for the beach? Should I join Ron & Peggy as they hike up the mountain trail? Or should I just stay here and take a nap? I’ll bet you all know the answer to that question.
Some of the team is waiting to go to town and are packing pills. This is a great help to my pharmacy crew. Somehow the Americans are better and faster than my Haitian pill packers. I still, however, do need to check over their work for unlabeled bags or mislabeled bags.
On the previous blog when I reported on our visit to Sonson’s bar I told you about Diana, my pill packer, and her beautiful baby. She came through the clinic today and I’ll soon post some pictures for you to view.
Speaking of views, we are presently watching Emil, the lobster man, swimming and diving for located about 30 yards off the eastern shore. He comes up only for a moment and resumes his dive so he is hard to spot unless you really concentrate. There is no boat near by and the he is usually found at the cove by the hotel which is almost 1 mile away. I wonder how many lobsters he will catch today with his spear gun?
We have posted the visual aids on sheets of paper in the pharmacy waiting area. All seem to agree that was a good idea to put a graphic, such as a picture of a blood pressure cuff, on the bottles of medication that we send home with patients. It is also possible that this could cause further problems id the Haitians share their medications with their neighbors as we suspect that do already.
S0o I see that it is ever cool back home. What gives with that? 68 degrees on July 18? Unreal. I am sitting out on the third floor balcony enjoying the breeze. We will so leave for our Saturday night party. Details to follow soon.

Friday July 17

2009-07-17T17:04:00.000-05:00

Today we saw a young man who had been in a motorcycle accident. He was in pain and, as he was being treated, endured much more pain as they cleaned and dressed his wounds. He did, however, leave with a smile on his face. He was so grateful for the care that he had been give.
The question of the day seemed to be “What do we have for anxiety?” Do you think that the medication was for Haitians or team members? I’ll let you answer that when you send comments.
I spent quite a bit of time trying to make a 6 year old boy smile. Nothing seemed to work for him. I tried the water gun, the ponytail hat and clown nose, and the funny glasses. I finally chose to give him one of the small Match Box cars that the First English Church of Peoria so generously donated. It worked wonders. Thanks again for that donation.
The team has made their selection for Saturday’s dinner at the hotel and is excited about the evening’s plans. Speaking of meals, we have not suffered in that department. There is a report that we are out of oatmeal but we will make due for breakfast. The mangos and are exceptionally tasty this year. A nice surprise was that the Internet was active during the noon hour and some of the team was able to get to their emails. I am continuing on the laptop computer set ups. I am finished with Dr. Nelson’s laptop and I am working on Boyer's. It is hard to clean up when I have so many security downloads to find and install.
Becky Novak remains the queen of the scales. I do mean the pharmacy scales. Sara almost let me scrub in with her today. At least she allowed me to prepare the scrub solutions. The late nights have been catching up with me. I stayed up way too late on Wednesday evening but I was the first to bed last night. That was not a good idea as the generator went off and Jon’s CPAP stopped working and awakened him for the rest of the night. I was not sleeping well as it was very hot and muggy so I went down in the dark to switch it over. I was unable to locate a flashlight but safely made the trip and changed the power. The fans here are very important.
The team went to Son-son’s last night. I was able to see Diana, my pill packer, and her new baby. The baby is as cute as ever and looks very healthy. Ron and Peggy arrived in mid afternoon and met an American at the Cyvadier Plage Hotel named Rachel. She joined us at Son-sons and it was interesting talking with her. She is from San Francisco but attended college in St. Louis.
Tried to down load this early this morning and could not get on the net. I am now trying at noon with even poorer results.
No 5 PM and it is working so here it comes.

Wednesday and mid week exhaustion

2009-07-16T05:13:00.002-05:00

It is the noon break. The internet is running very slow so I’ll type this in a word file and post it later. We saw lots of small children today. We had to do the “Greasy Grind” twice already today and I suspect we will prepare the Griseofulvin suspension several more times this afternoon. I have been frantically looking for all of the Tylenol drops that I had purchased for this mission. They are no where to be found. Either I have shipped them ahead and are still somewhere in the Lynx Air system or they were all removed from the team luggage. In any event, we have none so, we will be using up more of the 60 ml solution than we had planned on using, So far, that is the only real problem we have had. I never did find the extra permethrin cream.
It is now 5:30 PM and much of the team has again gone to the beach. This time they supposedly went to the small beach. I still have not seen that place. Someday, I’ll not be so tired at this time of night. My crew has done another fantastic job in the pharmacy. We are so far ahead on everything. I plan to let Cari and Scott spend some time in other areas tomorrow. Then I can send Rebecca out to see more of that goes on at other areas of the clinic. I do not have the total on the number of patients that we have seen today. I do know that it will be a high number.
Oh my, the team is back from the beach and I have not made the shower and now there are umpteen people wanting to shower. Maybe I’ll wait till bedtime for that.
I hear the TV on in the next room. The internet is slow but the TV works. Why is that?
I am still typing this on the word document and posting if and when the internet is open.
Now it is almost 8:30 PM. The team meeting is over. Some interesting cases were presented today. I am trying to get pictures for you to look at. I must report that Dave Coleman is shocking me by eating each meal that we have enjoyed. I have, not once, seen him with a peanut butter sandwich. He showed me his plate at the beginning of dinner and his CLEAN plate at dinner’s end. I am so proud of him. I do need to report that Rebecca is so well trained at counting to 70 that when she diced up the hot peppers for dinner this evening they were neatly arranged in piles of 70. I am such a difficult boss of my helpers. Speaking of helpers, we are using an interpreter to assist us in the pill packing area until Dr. Ron and Nurse Peggy arrive tomorrow. He is 19 years old and has fallen in love with our Caroline. I doubt that she is aware of him. Scott and Caroline have made him feel comfortable, shared Facebook stories, played their music on the Ipods, and tried to get him to hydrate. He is, however, Haitian, therefore his work ethic is not very good, and he is terribly messy. Tomorrow should be his last day in pharmacy and he will be very disappointed to find that Scott and Caroline will not be there first thing in the morning. He also quits at 3 PM no matter what is going on.
I want to encourage you to check out the other blog at www.fotcoh.org. I need to do the same thing soon. I have finally figured out that Jailson is from Brazil. He is presently teaching Rebecca Portuguese here in the third floor. They had a great conversation at the lunch table about Brazilian kick boxing. Most of the young ones are on the third floor balcony. The rooftop is off limits and I am pleased to say that all have abided by the rule. I must admit that it is a tough rule for me as I love to lie on the roof and watch for falling stars.
Noww it is 5 AM and the internet is working so I'll post this.

Tuesday July 14

2009-07-14T17:41:00.002-05:00

For those who have been here before, you will recall Dieudonne’s arrival with hand claps and whistles. Add to those sound the noise that Esperidon (Don or Asparagus) makes as he rakes he fallen leaves with his tree branch, add the sound of the nearby goats, and finally, the crashing waves and you will understand the symphony playing as I begin the day. The breeze here on the south east corner of the third floor is wonderful. I’ll need to rearrange the fans so I can sleep better tonight than I did last night.
The luggage truck arrived after team meal. I must report that David C ate the meal and not his usual peanut butter & bread meal. I was impressed. I did not keep track of the time it took to unpack the bags. I do know my clean and organized pharmacy is no longer. Today’s first project will be to restore some order.
Team reports that they had two O.J. Simpson runs through O’Hare and Miami airports. Surprisingly their entire luggage made it with them. Very little was broken. TSA in Peoria thoroughly inspected their bags, even opening and inspecting the ceiling fans that were in sealed cartons.
Every one is enjoying the Prestige and the Haitian coffee. Jon Wagner will serve as our team cook. We should have the usual oatmeal breakfast soon. Most of the older team members are awake but very few of the youngsters.
It is now almost 5 PM. Much of the team is off to the beach. We started clinic today around 10 AM and have seen a ton of patients. They are still tabulating the count. We we went out around 8 AM there must have been over 300 people waiting to get in. Since Pharmacy was up and ready we started to see patients earlier than planned. There were the usual rough spots but all in all it was a good day. I am very pleased with the volunteers that have been assigned to me for this team. They really got a work out today and did an outstanding job.
Lots of kids with fungal infections were seen today and that requires that we compound the medication. We call it the “Greasy Grind” as we grind up the required number of Griseofulvin tablets and suspend the powder in a solution of Ora-Blend. Our thanks to the May team for the bubble gum flavoring agent to mix with it. So, thank you, Mark and Phyllis.
BTW the revealing surprise for the team was the fact that we had washed the fans, both floor and ceiling, but, more importantly, we also washed every window in the clinic. Inside and out and cleaned every screen. It is so wonderful to look out at the beautiful view from clean windows and enjoy the additional air from unclogged window screens.
I will try to get out on the internet and post this. The internet has been quite slow.
Almost forgot. I was mooned by all of the new pharmacy volunteers and Dr Sara today. I’ll give out details a little later.
Internet slow but I just heard we saw 173 patients today.

Monday in Haiti

2009-07-13T19:55:00.001-05:00

There is another beautiful sunrise here in Haiti that I am watching. All of the clouds from last evening’s downpour have passed. The storm arose around 5 PM. It started with thunder & lightening and then it poured by the buckets full for almost 1 hour. It was raining so hard that it was difficult to see much of the surroundings. We really felt sorry for the three women who took up positions in the patient waiting area outside the compound. We had notice them when we returned from our nice lunch at Cyvadier Plage.
Carol, Bruce, and I decided to walk to the hotel for lunch. Yes, I said, walk. Some of you might find the fact that I would walk somewhat shocking. We chose to walk up to the main road by Son-son’s, then along the main road to the road the leads back to the hotel. We passed Boyer’s house and we think he was surprised to see us. He had company on his veranda. His arm continues to be very sore and he plans to have Dr. Nelson look at it again before he departs for Port-au-Prince early this morning.
The three of us had another nice meal at the hotel. The manager was very pleased to see us again. We are trying different items on the menu so as to be better able to describe them to the team when we all eat at the hotel this Saturday. Again, we were pleased with the lower than expected bill.
Our return to the clinic was via the back route. Basically you follow a narrow foot path through the foliage. I have not taken that trail for several years and was surprised at how many homes were along it now. And, yes, the litter from trash dropped y the Haitian was everywhere. We thought we would see more small children on our walk but we were not joined by them along the way. We stopped by to see Renel’s home building progress. Not much has been done to the building since I last saw it in March. Renel has already asked Carol for money to help him finish building it. A note to Dr. Stoner, I will bring pictures but we failed to take along a camera yesterday.
It was a restful Sunday and we hope that we have everything ready for the team’s arrival today. We have one problem that we cannot find the solution to. The door on the north side on the third floor is locked and we cannot locate the key. We have looked everywhere for it. We are hoping it will turn up soon. There is an exit on the south side so the team will be forced to use only the one door.
I am watching the team’s flight progress on flight aware. That is so cool. I am also listening to the noise from the property to the West. The boys are back to the rock breaking. Yesterday, they added the sounds made by throwing the rocks into the steel bed of a large truck. It was very musical-not! Otherwise, it was nice to have a somewhat restful Sunday prior to a very busy week ahead.
Yesterday I wrote about seeing cats. On Sunday we saw an even stranger sight. As we sat at the Cyvadier Plage looking out on the water two, yes I said two, power boats were cruising past the bay. One was near the shore and the other a little further out to sea. I believe that is the first power boats we have observed in this area. Today’s news tells of a ferry boat accident between a city in the DR and Jacmel. I suspect that is the cause of us seeing a boat. I was unaware that there was ferry service from Jacmel. You learn something new every day.
The families who were eating at a nearby table were quite interesting. They appeared to be Sri Lankan’s. Two older men & women and two teen aged boys. They spoke French and mixed in a little English now and then, I think, to confuse us. Other than that family there was one other couple having a meal and that couple was engrossed in watching something on their laptops. I suspect the hotel has a wireless network.
It is now almost 8 PM. Team has had supper at the luggage truck will soon arrive. I’ll post this and describe the teams travel adventures another time. I will say that this team seems to be another great team. I am enjoying each one of them but I still miss my old team mates. Thanks for your support of FOTCOH and even more thanks for having to put up with me..

A Sunday morning in Haiti

2009-07-12T09:50:00.001-05:00

Hello from Cyvadier. We had a nice dinner last night at the Cyvadier Platz hotel by our favorite swimming beach. The dining room was real quiet. There was no band, no manager, no crazy March team members, only a bunch of crazy Peoria volunteers. There was one table of Sri Lankans, one table of French speaking people, one group from BC in Canada and one single blonde lady busy on her lap top. Our good buddy Belloni appeared towards the end of the meal and I bought him a Prestige. He said he knew where to find us. I had to send him home on Thursday as I did not need him then. I figured he would be mad at me but he seemed to understand. The food was very good even though Christopher, the owner was not present. Our bill was much less than we expected. We did speak with the manager in charge and we are working on details for next Saturday evening. EDH, the local power company is quite unpredictable so we use the generator when EDH is off. Thank you again Caterpillar and especially the folks who arranged the gift last September. Today I managed to complete the task that will be revealed to the team on Monday. I have not been bribed enough to divulge details till then. I suspect that the March team has some idea what the DOM is up to and will leave it at that.
For those of you who are keeping score, we have requested that Boyer drive us to 7:00 AM Mass. I told Bruce we should just keep the Toyota and drive to Mass by ourselves. Will the church walls fall in when Boyer enters? No, Boyer just dropped us off at the door and came back 1 ½ hours later. The Mass was 1 hour and 45 minutes. Last night Boyer was wearing a rosary around his neck as a piece of jewelry so maybe there is hope.
We had a patient show up Saturday with a RTC for yesterday and expected to be seen. I sent her away with instructions to return during clinic. Yes, team members and experienced FOTCH volunteers, I gave her a valid RTC slip. Maybe I should have made it for the September team. LOL.
I am not seeing much news from home on the PJ Star website so that is a good thing/ I understand that Bill Clinton went to the Northern part of Haiti last week but not to the Jacmel area/ I wonder what effect that will have in the long run.
A note to the July team: Today we took all of the small fans apart and finished cleaning them after the Haitian girls had attempted it. We also WD-40’d all of them. The bill for services is in the Haitian mail. There are two of the fans that we are unable to stop squeaking, no matter how much WD 40 we spray in it. We drove to Ti Moulage on Saturday and the surf was quite strong so I suspect the undertow was also strong. We are all set there for Sunday and made the Saturday evening arrangements at dinner on Saturday. There was a meeting Saturday of many of out Haitian workers today and Bruce was introduced as big boss. Carol and I are labeling Bruce as Boss # 5 as there are others who are above him on the organizational chart. He does tease well. A note to the previous FOTCOH teams, the swimming beach was filled with Haitians on Saturday night. It was great to see families enjoying the water. It was some sort of a party or picnic with several Haitian families. Yes, all of the vendors were there with paintings, jewelry, but no t-shirts and no t-shirt lady. Yeah.
Today will be a rest day. We may walk back to Cyvadier Plage hotel for lunch. You can look up Cyvadier Plage on Google if you care to. The Internet is working better today. It was very slow yesterday. There is still no rain, only heat & humidity. Roger sprayed for bug yesterday and gave us all a headache from the smell. It lingers on today. But now all of the bugs should be dead and that is a good thing. Strangely, we saw two cats in the past 24 hours. One was on the road from Ti Moulage and one here in our back yard. Speaking of the road from Ti Moulage, we almost stuck a stray cow that darted across the road right in front of our Toyota. I do not know how we missed it. Boyer’s right arm is still painful so he drives, shifts gears, and operates his ever ringing cell phone all with his left hand.
Thanks enough time on the computer this morning. It is time to get outside and watch the men who are fishing on the east side in 3 boats. They have the diving flag out so maybe we will have some lobster soon. We hope you are having a great weekend.

A Sunday morning in Haiti

2009-07-12T09:50:00.000-05:00

Come Saturday morning-

2009-07-11T07:21:00.002-05:00

-I’m going away with my friends.

So I thought I would start out today with a song since I chose to skip yesterday. Actually with Deacon Bruce here we start out the day with prayer, and that is a good thing.
There are three laptops here on the dining table of the second floor where I am sitting. Dr Nelson brought me his so I could try to load a program for the palm pilot that Holly from the March team, sent to me for him. However, I do not have the Palm program CD for the T/X model and I could not find the program on line to download. I did transfer some files from my laptop to his via my jump drive and promptly picked up the Trojan horse that was on his unit. He has no anti virus program, no firewall turned on, no clean up utility so I am fixing him up with some. It is a cute little Acer one which is ½ the size of my 17” screen that I need for my tired old eyes. I do find myself squinting at his small screen. I’ll give it back to him today when he stops by for it. The second laptop is one that Jacky, one of our Haitian workers and main stays would like to purchase. It is an old HP ze4800. They want $ 300.00 American for it and it is bare bones. I do not think that is a good price for that unit. There is no wireless card and I have yet to see if there is a way I can check out diagnostics on it to see what it may contain in the way of hardware specs.
Yesterday’s clinic results 28 patients were scheduled and 21 of them showed up. We had one show up who had a Return To Clinic (RTC) but the dossier was not marked by the provider in May so it was not on the list. I will not mention the provider’s name but it did make me smile, when we went to pull the dossier. Roger has been a great help in organizing the patients and anything that is asked of him. He must have turned away over 20 patients who heard we were in town and wanted to be seen. I made the mistake of allowing a reactive airway patient who was having severe breathing problems to be seen by Dr Nelson and the word got out. Out of the 66 people we saw two will be returning to see our doctors during clinic for follow up. I have some thoughts for medical advisory that are best shared there and not on this blog. I just got a note from pharmacist Jess that was encouraging bout the pre clinic. Thanks Jess.
BTW, I do see that I make this blog to personal but, since it is my thoughts and observations I’ll leave it up to better editors and writers to extract items for the FOTCOH blog. Someone from the July team other than me will be the author for the FOTCOH official blog so you might want to subscribe to it.
I have had several questions about the shocking announcement that I will publish this coming Monday. Maybe I chose the wrong word. Perhaps a better word would be revealing to describe what is going on. Yes, I am teasing you but, for those who have known me for any length of time, know that I love to tease.
Today we will continue to prepare the clinic for the team’s arrival on Monday. We hope they have better luck with travels than we did last week. Peoria airport was a breeze. American Airlines was a pain. Miami hotels were a bargain by Hotwire and the shuttles were easy to use when we found out where to find them. We did have to recheck the 50 lb bags-thanks to AA. Miami airport was easy to navigate but all of our gates were at the far end of the airport. Port-au-Prince airport remains the same. With the smaller early morning plane, a 737, we breezed through immigration. Yes, the Haitian herd was active as we boarded the plane and especially as we exited. It got worse when the luggage was finally off loaded. One lady was almost knocked across the room by a man swinging a bag off the carousel. Since I had to go back to retrieve the three missing bags I got to participate in the melee twice-thanks again to AA.
Boyer, our main man, has had his arm attended to by Dr Nelson. We have been trying to help him for 3 days but he would not listen until yesterday. I brought out the largest syringe and needle I could find for Nelson to us on him. I also found a skin stapler. It scared Boyer even more than he already was. Anyhow, the area has been drained and cleaned, antibiotic prescribed, and it should be better today. He plans t go to town to purchase Prestige, soda, water, and ice for the team’s arrival. I will try and have it chilled for Monday. We will also travel to Ti Moulage to put down the down payment on the Sunday beach adventure and travel to Cyvadier Platz to negotiate the Saturday evening event. I wonder if the team will tip the clinic hosts for all this extra hard work. LOL. As a reminder to any who have Google Earth, there are pictures of both Ti Moulage and Cyvadier Platz on that sight if you were ever curious. I find it fun to use that program and look at Jacmel, to try and find the clinic when it is visible, and other places in the world.
It is almost time for breakfast so I’ll need to clear this table and publish this to the site. Thanks again for the comments. Please keep them coming. And, yes, I am trying to catch the spelling and grammar errors and love it when you find more. That means you are reading this after all.

This is Thursday-I think

2009-07-09T19:36:00.001-05:00

Dave Coleman gave me permission last night to drink a total of 7 beers plus my wine. Who believes that I did that? Funniest thing is I never once got up over night. Do you think I have not been hydrating enough? My black t-shirt seems to have white streaks from the salt I have been sweating out. I have a 1.5 liter water bottle that I refilled twice a day and still not hydrating enough. I wonder what it will be like during full clinic.
Shocking development today but I am restrained from giving details until Monday morning. Strict orders from big boss so I must honor the request.
We enjoyed another rain free day in spite of thunder rumblings in mid afternoon. Today we saw 20 of the expected 30 patients so I am 2/3 rd’s pleased. We had two patients show up. One was to come on July 22. It was explained to me by Roger that she is illiterate and did not know when she was to be at clinic. Her “reactive airway disease” was in crisis mode so I asked Dr Nelson to see her. Come to find out that he was not fully aware of our guidelines and she had not been treated in May with the guidelines. It gave me a chance to work with Dr Nelson and he appreciated the help. Belloni showed up to work today and is mad at me because I sent him home. The mean old treasurer is watching the money again. We did not need him and I was told he was a problem for the May team. The mean old treasurer will only need the pill packers for one more half day tomorrow as he has 4 helpers scheduled for the pharmacy.
The other non scheduled patient today was one of Esperidon’s (many call him Asparagus) children or grandchildren. We never know which!. He had a bad cut on her finger and expected us to stitch it up. I made her wait until Dr Nelson showed. I do not do stitches-period.
In other news, Boyer, our main man, has a bed infection on his forearm and he will not let Dr Nelson work on it. Nelson and I are having a good time teasing him even though it is very painful. We have asked Neva and Andreta, our Haitian housekeepers, to clean off the ceiling fans for the team. It may take several days as they are only able to one floor of the clinic per day. You always have to remember you are in Haiti. They do not think or act as we would in the USA with regards to dirt, work, or finding things to do. You must always direct them and I have a hard time with that. Oh Well!
We are having fun with the local power company, EDH. They seem to switch the power off and on at random times instead of the expected 2 PM to 2 AM. So we are constantly switching from EDH to generator and back and forth. Again that is very Haitian.
Not much else to report to you. Thanks to my son & grandson for the comments.

Today is what day?

2009-07-08T18:37:00.001-05:00

Hello from Cyvadier. It is nearly 7 PM and we are done for the day. Up at 5:45 AM. Thanks you Sparky the rooster. One of these days……..you will be chicken soup.
I am pleased (?) to report that our neighbors to the West have returned to the rock breaking exercise that they have done on previous missions. This means that from sun rise to sunset you are treated with the musical sound of the sledge hammer hitting the rocks and the exclamations when it seems to have slipped and hit them instead. At the moment there are two of them so it is quite entertaining.
We had expected to see 30 patients today on our experiment for an early refill clinic. We won the raffle and 30 people showed. However: Dr Nelson was 1 hour late due to delivering a baby, or so he says. 25 of the people we expected showed. Three people show up that were given incorrect return to clinic May dates by yours truly and I feel very bad about that. One showed up who should have come on July 10 but had “extremely important business” on that day, and we had one patient who had a RTC slip but was not listed on our report. We will need to see one very sick patient during the July clinic.
Today went better than I expected and we had very few problems. Some of the usual start up confusion like where is the ??????. I am happy that I have been here often enough to be able to help out with many non pharmacy related items.
We did loose one jar of jelly in transit-it may have been strawberry and ½ half bag of M & M’s. We have had to wash two bags as a result. All of the ceiling fans need to be cleaned as well as the personal fans so I’ll be busy on Sunday and Monday. We hope to enlist Neva and Andreta to help with this. We caught Neva sleeping today so we know they have the time. I may also ask them to WASH THE WINDOWS! They are very bad as are the screens. If we got the lint off the screens they would let more air inside-I think!
All 3 of us slept well last night. I’m up on third only until team arrives, then I’ll move down to the boy’s room.
We had a big lunch, even though it was rushed, today and none of us are hungry for supper. We have some cold Prestige and some cold Sauvignon Blanc so I may end up drinking my supper tonight. I wonder why I drink so much beer here in Haiti as opposed to Peoria?
There are some surprises in the clinic pharmacy inventory that I need to investigate more carefully tomorrow. I am too tired tonight to think about it. We had a beautiful sunrise and sunset so it is a great day. Thanks for reading this.

Hello from Cyvadier July 7, 2009

2009-07-07T20:18:00.000-05:00

After a long and frustrating day, we are safely home at the FOTCOH clinic in Cyvadier. Last night Bruce & Carol at the Miami Doubletree and I at the Miami Airport Wyndham could not sleep well. I was just dozing off about 11 PM when FOTCOH Pharmacist, Mark Purcell chose to text me a message. That kept me awake for quite some time and I watched the clock till about 3 AM. At 4 AM, Bruce and Carol called me from Miami airport wondering where I was at. The Doubletree hotel told them to be at the airport at least 2 full hours before flight time do they chose to get to the airport at 4 AM for a 6:45 AM flight. Okay, so I am awake. Time for a quick shower and call the bellman to assist with the three 50 lb bags I had to claim at Miami due to the layover. I had acquired one of Bruce and Carol’s bags on my luggage cart so I had to get to the airport so we could check in together. Getting through AA check in and TSA was a breeze at that time of the morning. BTW, we saved 50 % 0n our hotel bills by using Hotwire. That was a nice thing. Bothe the Miami Doubletree and the Wyndham have 24 hour shuttles and are great hotels for $ 55.00 per night thank you Hotwire.

Our plane was 30 minutes late at take off due to a light bulb that needed to be changed and a late arriving passenger. We flew in a 737 which is know as the SST (short stubby thing)/ That forced us to give up one of our carry on’s due to the lack of space and the tremendous quantity of bags that were carried in the plane. We 3 were the majority of Blancs on the plane; I counted 5 of us on the plane. We arrived in PAP1/2 hour late and we encountered the usual delay in getting our luggage. However, three of our bags did not make the flight. One of my green 50 lb bags, one of Carol’s 50 lb bags and my carry on with my laptop. Oh SH##! So we were told to come back at 11:30 AM as the next flight would have landed and our bag would surely be on it. So Boyer took us to a nice hotel near the airport, along with his father, Louis, and we had a nice sandwich there. Boyer had eaten some fish the night before and was not feeling at all well. We returned to the airport and, of course, the plane was not in. It arrived 1 hour later and our bags were on the very last baggage cart that was unloaded. It was so exasperating. They could have cared less about unloading the carts. They kept shutting off the conveyor belt and standing around. Several Haitian went nuts so I did not have to get crazy. Finally, I got all three bags loaded on a cart and then had to hunt for Boyer and the Toyota. The Digicel phone that I had kept going to his voice mail and I was outside in the crazy thong of “helpers: that congregate there. Finally he picked up his calls and found me. Now we are off through Port-au-Prince and headed for Jacmel. For those of you who have never experienced that ride, I cannot begin to do it Justice. Washed out areas in the middle of the town, garbage dumps everywhere, cars, trucks, busses, tat-taps, and motorbikes everywhere. General mass confusion and chaos constantly were our traveling companions. Next came the run through the mountains. I am told there are 365 curves. We stopped counting as they came too fast. Boyer tried to maintain 40 MPH as he cut corners, assed on curves, honked his horn at blind corners, caused a pedestrian to drop her bowl of what ever she was carrying when we passed her too close. We almost wiped out two chickens, and more that I will not go into.
Finally, Jacmel, beautiful Jacmel, came into view and we arrive at the FOTCOH clinic safe, sound, hot and tired. Neva and Andreta had prepared a chicken with rice dinner for us and there was a cold bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and s few Prestige beers for us to unwind with. The only damage in our bags was ½ bag of plain M & M’s and a jar of jelly so we have some laundry to do tomorrow. I am disappointed that we lost so much time today that could have been used to prepare for tomorrows refill clinic but we will survive. It is just after 8 PM and I will close this, take a cool shower, and try to get some sleep. We are presently all on the third floor and running the air conditioner as it is extremely hot on both the second and third floors.
Thanks you for your prayers and support. Today was a very frustrating day but we continued on knowing that you are supporting what we are trying to accomplish for the Haitian people.

Maimi Nice

2009-07-06T18:37:00.002-05:00

Wanted so bad to write Miami vice but you all know what a good person I am and have no vice in my life. LOL! I am enjoying the savings that Hotwire gave me at the Miami Wyndham hotel. Nice place, great meal, cold glass of wine, free internet, nice weather, looking out past pool to nice golf course. half mile from airport, 24 hour shuttle. I could enjoy this again. Sure whish I understood the local language. Help is Haitian but language is Spanish.

You gotta love it

2009-07-06T07:29:00.001-05:00

Around 9 PM last night American Airlines called to tell us that due to mechanical difficulties, our 6 AM flight had been canceled. We are now going out at 10:55 AM and will arrive in Miami at 5:09 PM. That will require us to spend the night in Miami and catch the 6:45 AM flight on Tuesday for Haiti.
You gotta love it.

July 4,2009 The Haiti blog resumes

2009-07-04T21:57:00.002-05:00

It ‘s about 24 hours till I head for Haiti on another medical mission with the Friends of the Children of Haiti (www.fotoch.org). I will be going down about 1 week prior to the full team to try to solve some of the problems we are having with Haitian patients requiring refills. I hope the experiment works this time as it was not very successful in March of this year. We had expected about 50 patients per day and were lucky on one day to see 12. Perhaps we have learned from our mistakes. Only time will tell.
This team is composed of 23 volunteers. Thirteen are experienced and 10 have never been to Haiti. We have 9 men and 14 women. Darn, I was outnumbered in March also. There are three married couples, one engaged couple, one set of twins, one mother-son combo, and 3 mother daughter (or is it 4 when I count the twins?). According to our team leader, Sue Behrens, I will have 4 helpers in the pharmacy. That should prove interesting. There are a lot of young people on this mission so I may have to act my age for a change.
The team list is as follows:
Eric Behrens Sue Behrens
Ron Bush Dave Coleman
Caroline Cusack Katie Cusack
Peggy Gebhardt Scott Hultgren
Jan Lundeen Ed Monroe
Christina Myers Jailson Nascimento
Rebecca Novak Becky Reeser
Chris Robinson Sara Rusch
Anna Spika Mary Ellen Spika
Bruce Steiner Carol Steiner
Jon Wagner Sue Waltrip
Jordan Wilson.

Present plans call for us to leave Peoria on a 6 AM flight and arrive in Port-au-Prince around 4 PM on the same day. Bruce, Carol and I will leave Peoria on July 6 and the team will follow on July 13. We hope to be back in Peoria on July 24.

This looks to be another great team and a great experience. I’ll try to update the blog daily but the internet is so iffy from the clinic. Please keep us in your prayers.

Hello from Peoria

2009-03-30T16:21:00.000-05:00

We survived the trip over the mountains from the clinic to the PAP airport although there was some scares along the way. As of today, Monday, I have heard from some of the team and all are at home or will soon be home safely.

On Thursday we finished seeing patients sometime around noon. Our team saw a record 2212 patients on this mission. I am so very proud of all of the team members. After lunch, some of the team headed for the beach while a few of us readied the clinic for inventory and clean up. When the team returned they worked hard and completed the inventory. I should tell you that we had extra items to count. You may recall that Lynn and I had an appointment at a nearby school on Tuesday to pick up supplies. That turned out to be 4 truck loads of merchandise. We retrieved one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday and Boyer finished the work for us so we could get back to seeing patients. Some of the boxes were infested with termites. I managed to get bitten by a spider as I carried some boxes. I have the list of supplies so that our medical supply people can go over them. I did discover a full case of pints of cough syrup with good dating and also some melatonin spray that made Dr Jo pleased. On Wednesday, I had a visit from my friend Nego Pierre Louis. He is a young youth minister in Haiti. He introduced me to Ellen, his Canadian bride to be. They were married on Friday so I could not attend the wedding. That would have been fun.
I did manage to drop my laptop on Thursday night as I was inputting the pharmacy inventory data and lost about 1 hour’s time. It is okay and I brought the hard copies home to key here at my desk.

Now for the Friday story: First of all, I awoke at 1:30 AM and realized that my passport was in the checked baggage on the first floor. I took my trusty flashlight and went to retrieve it. Dick woke up at about 2:15 to switch from EDH to the generator and I heard that. Around 3:15 AM, Dr Ron and I woke up to start our day. The two vans and the luggage truck showed up at 4:30 AM and we were off in the dark for PAP. I sat in the front seat of the vans. Our driver tailgated Boyer’s truck into the mountains in the rain. As we rode through the mountains you could tell that we were in a cloud also. We came upon several large dump trucks that were slowly moving up the mountain. It was very scary trying to get around these trucks who did not want to yield the right of way. We approached Port-au-Prince around 6 AM. The town was bursting with people and cars everywhere. Try driving 3 abreast on a two lane road. No problem, the Haitians say, I’ll just get in the oncoming lane and pass everyone. Early morning is the time for school children to go to their schools sow we noticed yellow shirted crossing guards everywhere. Sometimes we encountered police with shotguns. That was interesting. Blancs (us white Americans) were in very short supply. Our drivers got impatient so they took another route and encountered the same traffic jams we had just left. The highest speed that we drove was around 55 just outside of Port-u Prince. Our speed in the mountains never exceeded 40 mph over the 365 curves of that road.
When we arrived at the airport, our luggage truck was somehow right behind us. We got our bags and entered the airport with little problems. Margo did misplace her bag but Boyer retrieved it for her. American Airlines computers were down so we stood for 90 minutes before the line began to move. It did not take long for us, once the computers were up, to get our boarding passes and pass through immigration to the shops and food stands at the departure lounge. Barb Smith found that she had a scissors at the Haitian security check which had not been discovered during 3 TSA check in’s on her way to Haiti. It was confiscated. Our flight took off on time and the trip to Fort Lauderdale was smooth. There was hardly a line at immigration and our luggage came out quickly so we had lots of time for good byes at FLL before we went our separate ways. Dr Ron & Dr Jaime flew to Miami on a later plane from PAP and reported no problems that way.
So now we are all home with find memories of this mission. Thanks for reading this. I am going back in July so I’ll restart at that time. In the mean time “ Bonde Bene Ou.” “May God bless you.”

Ed

Friday March 27, 2009

2009-03-27T04:10:00.001-05:00

It is 4 AM. We are about to board the bus for the Port Au Prince airport. 2212 patients served. Internet back on but no time to write. Pray for our safe journey home.

Thursday March 26, 2009

2009-03-26T06:15:00.001-05:00

Good morning. You may be wondering where I have been on blogging. The past 48 hours have been extremely hectic and busy. We have seen loads of patients here at the clinic and I seem to be running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off. I just wish the chicken was named Sparky, our Haitian rooster, instead of Ed.
So I am going to cheat this morning and post the notes that Marlena Marie is posting to her Facebook. I hope to have some time this afternoon to add more to the blog. Today is our last half day and that is followed by inventory, clean up and packing for home. We will be transported by bus around 5 AM Friday morning so I will likely finish this blog from back home.

Marlena’s notes:

We had a family spend the night last night, we set up a bedroom in they GYN room. The little girl (I'm not sure the name or age, maybe 4 yrs old) came in with a fever and was having seizures, we did some kind of surgery on her leg, but I never heard what for ( I will update that for you as soon as I hear, or read it on another volunteers updates). Her fever was 104.7. Dr Nelson thought it probably wasn’t malaria. They treated her fever and gave her IV fluids, and antibiotics. I am not sure if they determined the exact problem or not, but before we ate dinner last night, her fever was down to 100.4. It reminds me of how important it is that we are here. Last year we got a little boy as one of our last patients and we didn’t have time to help him as much as we would have liked, because it was time to go, so we drove him and his mom into the hospital, with money and supplies. I never heard what happened. I hope we don’t get any last minute serious ones like that again, although "just in time" is better than just missing us, at least we could get them to the hospital, and hope they got the care they needed (often, even in the hospital, they don’t, that’s why we send them with all the supplies we think they will need). Hospitals don’t work the same here as they do back home. In Haiti, you have to bring in your own supplies, IVs, medicines, etc. The hospital supplies the bed you sleep in, and maybe the surgeon or doctor but not the food, or meds or bandages or IVs. The patient’s family has to find those things and find a way to afford them, and bring them in. Because of this many people don’t get the treatment they need, even if they are in the hospital. As long as you have lots of money it’s not so bad.

Ok, well that wasn’t much of an update, but it’s all I have time for. I got a little needed sleep last night, and planned to get up early today but slept in a bit too. So it’s off to work now.

Thank you everyone for your replies, well wishes, support. I love hearing that you are reading and enjoying the updates.

Meci,

Lots of love yesterday. We saw 337 patients. A really bad case of Malaria, but Peggy and Dr Nelson fixed him up and sent him on his way after Tylenol, Ibuprofen (fever >103), IV fluids, Chloroquine, IV antibiotics and Typhoid treatment too I think, just to cover all the possibilities. I worked back and forth between provider and the Pharmacy again, which I like. Gives me a chance to move around a bit. I like to change things up. Pharmacy finished up around 6 o'clock today but it was going to rain anyhow so there was no hurry to get to the beach. In the morning Papa Dick had asked Lynn, our fearless leader, when standing out at crowd control where all the Haitian people are waiting to get into clinic, "What's your goal, how many do you want to see today?" Lynn's response? "All of them." Papa Dick, half laughing says, how long do you want to work today. "Through the night if we have to." Don'cha love her?! Unfortunately Papa Dick informed her that our interpreters won't stay through the night. So she set the goal at 300, which turned out to be a compromise between 300 and "all of them". It’s estimated we turned away about 100, most of who will be back today.

After clinic Dr Nelson stayed late and shared with us some of the signs and symptoms to tell us to suspect malaria versus typhoid and other tropical diseases. Very informative. Turns out the Haitians with very severe cases of Malaria have been responding very well, and quickly to IV fluids with B-complex (Vit B-12 specifically), and Chloroquine 600 given right away (then 2 more doses later). They are better within hours of that first dose, he said, and we witnessed that in the man Peggy took care of yesterday. He also told us that any pregnant women that come to his office get Chloroquine now, but there has to be education with it because the women used to take Chloroquine, in large single doses, to induce abortion. So the Drs have to explain to the women that the proper dose of Chloroquine prevents harm, and if anything does happen to the baby it’s not the fault of the Chloroquine. Dr Nelson said Malaria is increasing in epidemic proportions here, especially since after the hurricanes and flooding. Laurie Tinker shared with us some exciting news she had learned before coming on this trip; that there are allot of organizations, many in the Pacific Northwest, dedicating their research to finding a vaccine for Malaria. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundations has dedicated millions of dollars (or was it billions) to the cause. It is nice to know that while we are 15 or so volunteers here, fighting this on the front, there are masses of people behind us, back home supporting the cause and working to eliminate it.

We did get some bad news. Holly Melroe asked Dr Nelson about a little boy she'd taken care of, with a big round belly, who we sent to the hospital, St Michel in Jacmel. Dr Nelson told us he died the next day. It was Kwashiorkor, protein malnutrition. So many are at risk for malnutrition especially from protein, so much of their diet is rice, rice, and more rice. It is rewarding to be helping here, and I think we all feel like we make a difference, but sometimes its just so hard when we hear things like that. When you touch and comfort and hold them then you hear they died the next day. And when we run out of medicines, and formula, I keep thinking about my 4 pound baby, I don’t even want to ask. I keep telling myself, he's going to make it.

Tears are streaming down my face right now so I will switch to some great news.

We got a new Dr Yesterday. Dr Ron joined us on Sunday evening for our last week. He's from Ohio, and came for the last week (because his daughter got married right in the middle of clinic). He is a great asset to our team. He comes here a lot, working with other organizations also. We were so relieved when we unpacked his bags of supplies and found more baby formula.

Zech, my 16 year old son, worked in the Lab, essentially all by himself yesterday, doing blood sugars and other finger stick tests, hemoglobin’s, and testing urine. At our after dinner meeting Dr Jaime announced that Zech had made an interesting scientific observation; that the urines that were collected in the wax paper cups all were abnormal for biliruben and the ones collected in the little plastic cups were not. It’s so nice to see him evolving and growing while he is here, and so welcomed by the other volunteers. Everyone keeps telling me what a joy it is to have him here. Makes me proud.

And on that note, I think I will sign off, because I need to go shake him up a bit and get his sleepy butt off the couch. (He sleeps on the couch because his roommate snores, he says, "but don't tell him that mom". (I won't just all of you.)

Again, thank you all for your support, and positive thoughts and prayers.

Love from Cyvadier,

Marlena

Tuesday March 24, 2009 early morning

2009-03-24T06:50:00.002-05:00

Hello from the third floor balcony. The breeze is nice here this morning so I escaped from my usual computer station to enjoy the breeze, the rocking chair, and the sound and smell of the sea. It is very cloudy in the East so I doubt that I will see the sunrise. I think that I may have skipped a report to you. I just looked over my blog and fail to see a report for Sunday. I will blame it on the rum and coke that I drank at Ti Moulage.
So, on Sunday we had a very nice prayer service on the veranda. They even convinced me to lead a song. I tell you this team is nutty! After a great pancake an bacon breakfast that was cooked by our fearless leader, Lynn we relaxed until it was time to go to the beach. I got a new appreciation for Larry Shank. He taught me how to prepare a team for the trip to the beach and so we had the coolers filled, the opener attached to the cooler, some extra wash-ups, garbage bags, and cups for mixing the rum and cola. Thanks Uncle Lar!!! I did forget to bring some cigars. The road to Ti Moulage was much different than in years past. Just East of Cyvadier there is a large hole in the road. A few miles further on is an area where there must have been a lot of run off as the part of the road has washed away and it is about 3 car lengths of rough road to cross. I thought that was bad until we reached the next one and it was worse. Almost 75 % of the road near the Ti Moulage area has washed away leaving a narrow passage to the other side for one car or truck to pass through. There are several large boulders visible so you would know that it had to be a tremendous amount of water to cause those large stones to crash into the roadway and wash it away. There was no sign of large chunks of the blacktop road in the ditches. Having encountered little road damage on the route from PAP two weeks ago, and seeing no visible damage to the Cyvadier area, I was not really seeing the destruction that this area had during last year’s hurricane. The trip to the beach sure opened my eyes and my mind. How many people lost their lives in this area from that storm? Now I understand why it was so hard to get supplies from Cap Haitian in the North all the way down to Jacmel here in the Southern part of Haiti. The reports of many roads being washed out no make a lot more sense to me.
Okay, back to the beach we go. It was not very crowded again this trip. Shopping wise we had T Shirt lady of course. She had a new selection and one had J’aime on it so we got a bright yellow one for Jaime. I’ll tell you a bit more about that in a moment. Zech enjoyed going from vendor to vendor for his treasures. Dr Jo bargained with them in French. I had brought some ones and fives but did not have enough to make change for every one. And, yes, I did not shop but you expected that. I have more than enough Jacmel t shirts and art works at home. Dinner was excellent as usual. The lobster was cooked to perfection. Interestingly, the food costs for the meal were $ 13.00 per person and that, to me, is a real bargain for what we had. Yes, the fish heads were still attacked and if you flip over to my Picasa album you will see Jaime in his new T shirt doing a dance with a fish skeleton. Unfortunately the clouds moved in and we returned to the clinic in the rain. Thank goodness that we were in our swim wear. On the way back, however, we did something very American. We stopped at Joseph’s Cyvadier market for two loaves of bread for the next day’s lunch menu of grilled cheese sandwiches. I got to run in and have Joseph put the bread on FOTCOH’s tab. The rest of the evening was spent in socializing and yes, I stayed on the roof too late. The end of the story of Jaime’s t shirt is the dye around the neck area ran down and ruined the shirt, I think. I have not seen it since Tracy took it to try to wash out the stain. Speaking of laundry, this team has it done early and often has it stashed in one of the two girls rooms by the time I finish work. So I have to ask one of them to rescue my clothes. Thanks Tracy, I am sure the Jodi will not mind..
Breakfast time for me.

2009-03-24T06:49:00.001-05:00

Saturday March 21, 2009

2009-03-23T07:00:00.000-05:00

I am writing this off and on as I get some time this Sunday. This was an interesting day. At the start, Katie had bandaged a young man’s foot and elbow and sent him on to pharmacy. By the time we filled his order, he had managed to seat enough that the bandage on his elbow was coming loose. One of my interpreters, Belony, tried to help him and was going out the door with a roll of duct tape. I inquired what was going on and soon found myself binding the elbow with a roll of coban. It is all a part of our full service pharmacy here in Haiti. We are seeing several police at this clinic and they are bringing their families in to be treated. Many of them speak good English. Papa Dick and I have a meeting early some morning with a person who runs an orphanage here in the area and has given us supplies in the past. That should be interesting.
I got in trouble yesterday with my water gun by chasing Diedudone though where Dr Jo was trying to treat a wound. I am also in trouble as I have managed to break the pharmacy sink drain basket. The very small screw that holds it together finally rusted through so you need to be creative to get a sink full of water for cleaning up the pharmacy tools.
Our evening at the Cyvadier Plaz (notice that I have corrected the spelling now that I re-read the hotel’s signs) was a great time. The food was excellent and almost every one got what they ordered. The owner was very helpful and attentive. He set up a tab for each of us so that we would not have to bother the bar staff with change. I had taken a photo copy of the drink prices and translated the costs into US dollars. I had failed to add the tax and gratuity so he redid my list and everyone had a better idea of how much they were spending on drinks. He had engaged a band so we had even more fun dancing and laughing. BTW, my legs are sore-sometimes I am not to smart. We finished the evening on the roof gazing at the stars. That keeps the noise further away from Dick and Barb. This team is doing its best to wear our hosts out.
Here are about patient numbers to this point: Tuesday 245, Wednesday 271, Thursday 205, Friday 256, and Saturday 192.
I am posting a link to some of the pictures from team members: http://picasaweb.google.com/edmonroe316 I hope that you enjoy them. I wish that I had taken the time to label them with more information. Marlena is writing a blog for FOTCOH each day and you can access it through the FOTCOH webpage (www.fotcoh.org). Marlena is writing from more of medical perspective as she has floated from being a provider, to helping me in the pharmacy, to triage etc. She is a great multi tasker.
Someone needs to use this computer so I’ll close.

Friday March 20, 2009

2009-03-21T05:43:00.001-05:00

Hello again from Haiti. I do hope you are also enjoying reading the blog on PNN. If you go to the FOTCOH website (www.fotcoh.org) you will get a more medical perspective than I may be writing about at this location. I have enlisted the help of Holly Melroe to add more medical information to this blog. Message to Scott, I am putting Holly to work as requested. I have not found the rolling pin but there is one here so I am mindful of that.
Today we had a squirt gun war. Zech passes out several squirt guns and it got a little out of hand till our team leader, Lynn, stepped in to halt it. I found out that Zech had not taken his meds/ HMMMM! It looks like he and I will have to do a little talking soon.

Of course, in the middle of the day when we are the busiest so I had little time for him, Fortunately, Barb had rescued the soccer ball that I brought down for him, I had to stop and re-inflate it, of course. I did not break the needle this time as I have done in the past. His dad said that he had not been well but the clinic was closing and I kept getting pulled away so they left before I could get them seen. I have asked Jacky, one of the Haitians that work with us, to tell them to come back to be seen by a provider.

Did I tell you that we had a great time at Son-son’s last night? Apparently I missed the roof top after part here at the clinic. It is reported that it was complete with dancing to the voodoo music that was playing just outside the gates. I have added a few more pictures to the Google album on line.
Good morning- the joke is on me. It is now 5 AM Saturday and I never did get back to finishing this edition. I do not know why I am up so early on a Saturday as I know it was late when I finally went to bed. I spent some time late last light hunting the power switch for the pump to draw water up to the roof top tanks because they were empty. I looked all over the third floor balcony store rooms and could not locate it. Papa Dick tells me this morning that it is now outside by the air conditioner. Oh well, I tried.

I have no notes from Holly on the interesting medical cases to pass along yet. I did get a message from Scott, Holly’s husband, to beware of her rolling pin. Thanks, Scott, I have hidden the rolling pin that was in the kitchen, just in case.

Sadly, I must report that we are stating to get low on medications and still have several days of clinic left. I know we will run out of baby formula even though we brought down a lot of it. We are encouraging each mother to breast feed but the Haitian men will not support the women in that decision.

Today will be a half day of clinic. After we finish, 10 of the team will head to town on Son-son’s tap-tap for some sightseeing and shopping. The rest of us will go over to the Cyvadier Platz hotel around 4:20 PM for dinner and socializing. Speaking of shopping, we had an opportunity to shop just outside the gate late yesterday afternoon as Jacky had brought his paintings, wood carvings, and jewelry for our perusal.

The shower is open so I’ll post this and dash in before someone gets ahead of me. BTW, this team has really bonded well. There are no conflicts or personality issues, only smiles, hugs, jokes, and water gun fights.

Thursday March 19, 2009

2009-03-19T22:16:00.000-05:00

Okay, where I do start this evening? I have to warn you that I have been fortified with more than a little Prestige, our local Haitian beer/ So you will understand if I have more than my usual 20 spelling and grammar errors.
We started the morning with a brilliant sunrise and some great oat meal. The team was ready for the day on time in spite of the fact that many of us stayed up talking in the lounge. I finally headed for bed at 10: 30 PM.
Today was another interesting day. We had Blancs (whites) as visitors today. Sara Wallace, a nurse midwife who is trying to establish the Olive Tree Project (www. Olivetreeproject/com). She brought in two children to be seen, one being a newborn. Along with her, she brought along a pharmacist by the name of Zelda Knause. Zelda is from Alberta, Canada. I tried to chain her to the pharmacy counter but the darn lady escaped. It was fun showing her around. My helpers today in the pharmacy were Peggy, Mickey, and Zech so we had lots of blonde jokes and blonde moments. Thank goodness that Marlena is not a blonde or I would be total crazy by day’s end. Roger gets a lot of laughs from our actions and words in the pharmacy. I have been teasing all of my helpers as they learn to “Moon” right there in the pharmacy. I am sure the Haitians do not understand what is going on and I’ll bet you are wondering also.
We sent Zech to town with Boyer today and he came back wanting some banana flavored soda, I tiled him I would get him one this evening at Son-son’s. Today was also a wine run into town as all of my wines have been consumed. Boyer came back with more wine, some Sauvignon Blanc and Merlot. I did stash some of the Cote du Rhone which I am drinking as I write this note. Some of the team is recovering from last night’s dinner, the Mexican bomb. However, I was asked to provide some Colace, Surfak, and Dulcolax as an after dinner treat. I will leave it to you to translate that remark.
BTW Boyer brought back some Cohiba cigars for $ 5.00 each. Eat your heart out cigar lovers.
This seems a bit disjointed. I swear it is not the wine as much as it is the interruptions as team members pass by where I am sitting and alternately squirt me with a squirt gun or just give me a hard time. For you who are counting, we saw 271 patients yesterday and 205 today. What does that mean, you might ask? Well we believe that we DID make a difference in those people’s lives and are damn proud of it.
Wile at Son-son’s, we again saw my pill packer, Diana and her beautiful 2 ½ month old baby, Karin. Many of the team held the baby and the baby did great in spite of all the blanc faces. I understand that Diana will get married some time next month.
Papa Dick commented that with a large number of females on this team that the sound level that they generate is much louder. I am on the third floor and it sounds like I am in the middle of the second floor where most of the team is relaxing.
Message to Scott: Holly says that I am to help her just like you would. What does that mean?
New pictures are posted on the Google site.

Wednesday March 18, 2009

2009-03-19T05:57:00.001-05:00

Sunrise was blocked again by the clouds so I just sat in the rocker and watched the waves break on the rocks. I do need to report that Zech spent another night in the IKEA lounge. I can testify that the last clicks on his laptop came at about 3 AM because it is right outside my door. I am amazed at the battery on his laptop lasted that long,

Today was Mickey’s day to work with me in the pharmacy so I can now officially announce that Mickey has done drugs in Haiti. I hope her family understands. She did a great job and is scheduled to work with Zech and me again tomorrow. Some of the team to the beach this afternoon and they report that the swimming is great. The plan for tomorrow night is a visit to Son-Son’s for okra (Fried dough with hot peppers).
One of the retired Americans who live here in the area, Jean Frederique, visited the clinic as a patient today with his wife. I happened to go to Triage as his cell phone was going off so I confiscated it, much to the surprise of the crowd. Jean thought that I was his FOTCOH pharmacist friend Bob. He had forgotten my name so he got his first dose of my water gun. As he progressed from Triage to Lab, I managed to soak him several times. I even ventured out to the provider stations to catch him again. When he came to the pharmacy he wanted a medication that we do not stock. I told him to buy it in the USA next month when he goes there to see his USA doctor. It is on the Wal-Mart $ 4.00 list so I would not advise the May team to bring him the supply.
Dr Jo’s has a new sponsor child and I hope she will share the picture that was taken of that moment. Dr Jo did manage to catch me with my ball cap and red nose and I believe that she has sent it to me to be published.
We enjoyed another great lunch and dinner today. We are not suffering in the food category. Our team meeting ran a little longer than we would have liked but it is an important learning time for all involved. I am in the process of loading pictures to my Google account and I hope that this link will help you. Here is the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/edmonroe316/ You will see pictures from this mission and several others, I hope you enjoy them all.
It is pouring down rain, yet we still have the internet. BTW, Linda Damery announced the bith today of another grandchild and all are doing well. Congratulations to Linda!
The new clock in the pharmacy works well. Thanks Gary, Jess & Sharon. However, I do NOT have any dropper bottles here. It is hard to dispense the Lugol's solution.
Okay, so the rain has slowed down the internet connection enough that I am headed for bed and will post this in the morning.

Tuesday March 17, 2009 9 PM

2009-03-17T20:56:00.004-05:00

Happy Saint Patrick’s day. One of today’s funnies was a Haitian with a Green Saint Patrick’s day shirt on who had no idea that it was Saint Patrick’s day let alone who Saint Patrick ever existed. We celebrated the day with a taste of Irish whiskey courtesy of Katie Koehler. Thank you Katie!
I have a message for Tracy Higdon’s friends and family. She has some problems with her email and the passwords. So she was unable to get on to her Comcast account or her Google accounts, and that darn Facebook would not cooperate either. I convinced her to use my email to send to her partner and let her know the problem. I told her to use her name as the subject so her partner would not send the message to the trash. Her partner helped her with the proper sign on and she is now back in business.
Next I want to send a message to Sue Behrens about Silver Nitrate. The can that was packed in the Peoria bags come open. I now have permanent black stains on my hands and on my good FOTCOH shirt from unpacking them in a warm moist atmosphere. Next time, please put the %%&&$$ things in a baggie.
We had lots of babies today. Two of our failure to thrive babies on Medika Mamba showed up. Incidentally, we managed to see 249 patients on our first day. We ended the day with 33 of the patients who were supposed to be here last week for their refills. Papa Dick gave them an angry lecture about responsibility.
First day problems were relatively minor and I had to tease our leader, Lynn that the team meeting went on too long. We did not sit down to dinner till after 7 PM. I am pleased to report that Zach did great working in the pharmacy. His mother, Marlena, was also helping me today in the pharmacy. Tomorrow, poor Mickey has to put up with me. Speaking of that, I may get strangled or murdered by Dr Jo. I have been teasing her and tonight she threw a pen at me when I again brought up a “moving” subject. Speaking of Dr Jo, she is a great physician and I am so pleased that she is a part of this team. I do hope she stays involved in FOTCOH as she will be a valuable asset.
We are out of Beclometasone inhalers but saved by the Triamcinolone inhalers that the upcoming May team sent down for us. BTW, it seems that we have re-established a working agreement with Lynx air for air freight shipments.
Other helpers in the pharmacy today were Dr Jo, Peggy, and Linda. Others tried to help but it gets too crowded and too hectic for more than 6 people at one time in that small of a space.
I hear the stars are quite visible on the roof this evening, all of the other nights we have had too many clouds. It will be interesting for the folks from Washington to be about to see the Southern Cross in the sky. So I’ll close to do a bit of star gazing.

I am still hoping for more comments. Come on folks, let me hear from you!

Let me include some photos from Holly Melroe’s camera

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Monday evening March 16, 2009

2009-03-17T06:23:00.000-05:00

It is late. We are just finished with a long team meeting and I am very tired. Team arrived early today. Lynn finally arrived around 7 PM. Please be sure to ask Lynn to tell you where her passport is at the present time. Is it at home? Did she leave it on her last flight? Did she sell it to some Haitian?? Where is it at?

This looks to be another great team. While we will miss John, David, Liz, Rene and others, we will make do with the great group that we have. I have managed to tease each and every one of them.

I am fielding questions now from providers so I will save this for tomorrow.

Hello again. The sun is about to rise but the clouds may not give me the view that I am hoping for this morning. Zech is sleeping in the Ikea lounge and was there all night. I have no idea why he chose the lounge to sleep in. I was not the last one to bed. I know Marlena, Maureen, Zech, and Lynn were all on computers when I headed for the bed. We did manage to get Maureen up on Facebook.

The team had a great experience at PAP airport. Only two were stopped. Maureen’s bag was opened and the customs agent asked her about the medication Topamax. When she answered it must have been what he wanted to hear so he closed her bag and sent her along. It seems that Boyer had talked with this agent and his child was on Topamax so Maureen may have been set up by Boyer. Laurie was also stopped and asked to open her bag, which was another team member’s. Inside was a baggie with personal items including a bottle of Aleve. Laurie explained that it was a pain medicine. The agent asked her to take one so she complied. With that act, he sent her on. It is hard to figure. Also at PAP airport they encountered the smaller line at Immigration and got their bags in record time. They arrived at the small airport, caught the Tortug flight and were in Jacmel before 11:15 AM.

After lunch the luggage truck arrived and the team got all of the items put away. There were lots of medical supplies so some adjusting had to be made to the hallway storage of the items. That is a small area so, after I changed the light bulb, the rest of the team adjourned to the second floor balcony to sample the Prestige. I taught Tracy how to make coffee and she is now enjoying her Haitian Bleu. I teased her that with all of the designer coffee she can get in Seattle, they do not hold a candle to this blend.

We have quite a crowd outside waiting to be seen. It rained around 8 PM and was another heavy downpour. It hurts to think that those who are waiting outside in the rain have n- protection from the elements. I did notice that Luloon has her cooking fire going at her Haitian food court station.

Other team members are wanting the computer so I’ll wrap this up and post. Please know that we are all well, safe, and so happy to be serving the Haitian people.

Sunday March 15, 2009 late evening

2009-03-15T21:35:00.000-05:00

Hello. It is late and we must arise early in the morning. Seems our team leader, Lynn, has encountered some problems and we will need to help her solve them. We have spoken with her twice already this evening and plan to call her as soon as we get up in the morning. I do not want you to worry. Lynn is okay, safe and sound but separated from the rest of the team. I will fill in details later.

We saw about 15 patients today out of the 34 expected. We saw an additional one from the January team. You may have read that they treated a lady who had been burned in a fire and set her off to the hospital here in Jacmel. She was never treated there so we had to debride and dress the burn again today. We are having her return this clinic for more treatment. I think she still had on the original dressing from January.

We awoke this morning and traveled to 7:00 AM Mass at Sacre Coeur. We had two guests, Desaline and Renel along. Mass was in Kreole so I only understood a word or two. It also lasted 1 hour and 35 minutes but was filled with singing and music. There were lots of women, a few men, and several children at the Mass. After Mass we came back to the clinic and had breakfast and prepared for the Noon patient arrivals. We were finished by 3 PM. Dr Nelson was a little late getting here. Roger, my pharmacy helper, had to play surgical technician for Dr Nelson and his nurse. Roger came dressed in a clean white shit. Beige slacks, his best shoes and a yellow tie. I was afraid he would get all bloodied but I did not see a drop of blood or speck of dirt on his shirt afterwards. I teased him about his new job.

We had a quiet afternoon and I got in a short nap before dinner. We enjoyed a quiet dinner and lots of conversation. I called Donna around 7 and that was the day’s highlight. It seems that all is well at home and that is reassuring.

I plan to discuss the experiment I came here to perform tomorrow morning as we await the arrival of the rest of the team so I’ll make this short tonight.
I would sure appreciate any comments on this that you would care to share.

Saturday evening March 14, 2009

2009-03-14T18:40:00.000-05:00

We are just back from dinner at Cyvadier Platz hotel. We needed to check it out and make our reservations for next Saturday evening. The cove was filled with a lot of water and there is very little beach area this year. There were several swimmers in the cove and a couple in the hotel pool. We met the midwife who accompanied Tiffany Olson, MD with the January team at the hotel. At Son-son’s we also met with an OB-GYN from Port-au-Prince who wants to help (?) us to get registered as an NGO in Haiti in about 39 days. A further meeting was set up with him for after the clinic. We need to check out his story. The experienced FOTCOH people will understand that. We also stopped at Joseph’s Cyvadier market. Attention: he has Doritos, Ramen Noodles, Prego sauce, and lots of rum. No wine selection however. Darn!

So far the experiment that I came here to do has mixed results. The problem is that the Haitians are not showing up in the numbers that we expected. On day 1 we had to refer 3 patients back to this clinic for follow up and another one again today. I am pleased to report tha those who have come to the clinic were stable in their Diabetes and Hypertension but Dr Nelson picked up on other medical problems. Some of which we could treat, like the malaria patient today, some need more examination by our providers.

Tomorrow we may also have a problem with patients as it is Sunday so we expect that instead of 30 it may be closer to 10 patients who come to us. Dick says Mass starts at 7 AM and we will have two more Haitians with us at Mass. I’d better get to bed early. Ha! I enjoyed the rain overnight. It came in waves at about 15 minute intervals. Yes, I did not sleep well last night but I still feel rested.

The pharmacy will be ready to open when the team arrives. We are days ahead on the pill packing. I gave the girls tomorrow off because we are so far ahead. Again, I must thank the January team for a well organized pharmacy to come into.

BTW, I think I told the team that I lost the lizard to the floor cleaners. I’ll have to look for another item for practical jokes. I’ve been working to start getting the lab set up but I have not done that before so I am proceeding slowly.

Dr Nelson and I had a nice talk today about patient education in Haiti, patient compliance in Haiti, our new packaging to protect the medications, and working through the interpreters. We decided that he should address the interpreters and maybe all of the Haitian workers about that and some other issues on Tuesday. We continue to tease each other every chance we get but we do work well together and that is a good thing. He dose not get mad when I question a dose or a therapy. I gave him my printed 2009 Medical Guidelines last night and he had questions for me about some of the pages so I believe that he read it. I also sent it to him in a pdf file for his computer. He is now a resident physician at St. Michel hospital and he has privileges there now. Sadly, the failure to thrive Medika Mamba baby that we sent to the hospital never arrived. Now we will need to see if we can find the baby while the team is here.

I know I am missing the March madness in Peoria and more importantly, I am missing my family. I did get a message from my son so I do have a news link there. I see on the PJStar website that the Illinois river is flooding the downtown area and that is no surprise with the rain we had last weekend. I am anxious for the rest of the team to arrive next Monday. It should be a great experience. It is time to go out on the deck and check on the stars if the cloud cover has dissipated. Papa Dick just told me that it smells fishy out there. I also hear the Saturday night Voodoo drums on the North side so I’ll climb on the roof for a better view. Whew, I just caught a whiff of the breeze from the South and Dick is very right.
Till tomorrow

Friday Afternoon March 13,2009

2009-03-13T17:36:00.000-05:00

I am happy to report that so far today the Friday the 13th bug has not arrived in Cyvadier. We had a good day and about 20 of the expected 30 patients showed up. I am not sure about the 20 but it was somewhere in that area. We also had one from yesterday and one from tomorrow show up at the gate.
Today was teaching day. I realized that we had not given Dr Nelson the current medical guidelines so when he when outside of them I could only holler at him a little but that was fun to do in front of his nurse, his best friend Boyer, and Papa Dick. Actually he is doing great, as I suspected he would. Roger is also doing a great job and my pill packers are getting us ready for next week. Life is good. I am sitting here with Prestige in hand and reprinting the medical guidelines as I gave my copy to Dr Nelson with instructions that there would be a quiz hen he shows up at 10 AM tomorrow. Many of the patients come into the clinic around 8 AM expecting to be seen.
Tomorrow is bug killer day. Roger, my main man in the pharmacy is also the FOTCOH exterminator so I asked him to spray the nest of mosquitoes that are in the pill packing room. That is all that I have encountered so far. My dead lizard got swept up by the girls before I could trap it into a baggie for later use. Darn the luck!
Last evening, I cleaned up Dick’s laptop computer and tonight it is the desktops’ turn. I did get to sleep around 9PM and slept till 6 AM. I must have been tired!
The welder came today to change the lock on the entrance to the pharmacy waiting area. There is no such thing as a locksmith so he had to take off the old lock and replace it with one that Boyer purchased in town.
The girls, Neva and Andreta, are saving the prunes for the team. That is enough said about that.
Fortunately, I have no last minute requests today. We did worry about the new print cartridges that Barb brought down but they fit the printer as advertised.
Brother Nego Louis, a youth minister friend from Jacmel, came to the clinic and I was able to spend 1 hour visiting with him. He may bring his bride to be back on Sunday so that I can meet her. We walked around the grounds, out on the rocks and back to the crowd control area and had a great time catching up with each other since we last saw each other in Florida in November. He tells me that the word is out that we are already open to see patients. I advised him that was not true. We did have two people show up at the gate today hoping to be seen by Dr Nelson.
I am getting anxious for the team’s arrival. I told them that they should NOT wear their FOTCOH t-shirts when they land in PAP. We suspect that the T shirts are a red flag to the customs people that we are carrying drugs so it may be better to blend in a little more. We have been unable to get the letter from the Haitian Department of Health to allow us to bring in drugs as the person who was to write the letter is recovering from a gunshot wound. We did get a letter however, from the Jacmel Health Department and hopefully that will do on Monday at the PAP airport.
We had a visit last evening from a dentist from Jacmel who wants to treat our patients. I asked him for more information so I can pass it along to our FOTCOH dentists. We told him that we could only pay him VERY little.
On the local front, Belony showed up today to work even though he was not invited. Big surprise there. Diana, one of my pill packers is too busy with her new baby to work and Binotte is reported to be very sick but I have no idea what the diagnosis is. So I have anew person, Dessalines to help Suzette and occasionally Jacky. Dessaline is about 20 years old and still attending school. She is the sponsored child of someone but I did not look up who that might be yet.
I did discover that I can get on to FOTCOH’s accounting from here and I am able to track what is going on back home so a word to the wise that I am watching you! Ha!
It is time to end this, transmit it out, grab another Prestige or glass of wine and watch the sunset over Jacmel bay.
Please know that you are never far from my thoughts and prayers.

Thursday March 12, 2009

2009-03-12T16:00:00.001-05:00

It is 4 PM and we are done for the day. Only 10 of the 30 patients showed up today and we will have to see 3 of the 10 again next week for vaginal bleeding problems. I suspect they sat on the benches and discussed the diagnosis of the day.
That darn Sue Behrens, she insisted that I purchase two 2032 batteries for the HBGM meters and I never took the time. Well today, I could only get one of the six batteries to work. I hate it when I am so wrong. Marlena will bring more for this clinic. Thanks Marlena for the offer. Ed’s face is quite red. I am very mad at myself.

Other than that, things went smooth. Roger had been given no warning that we neede him but he was available. Yeah. Suzette came early to start packing pills and she is a great help. I was given another helper today but I have forgotten her name already. She is in school and will only come in the afternoon. She giggles a lot but works efficiently so I do not mind the giggles.
Th lock on the gate at the front door of the entrance to the pharmacy is jammed so all patients have to try to find their way in and out of the clinic.
Dr Nelson brought along a nurse from Dr Martinez hospital to assist him today. I feel like she was scared to death of us. Oh well!!

Unfortunately we discovered some problems on the dossiers from the January team but it will make for a good teaching lesson for our first full team meeting here.

I discovered a dead lizard in the lab. Now, if I were a nasty practical joker, I would place in in someone’s bed who made my life miserable during one of our mission days. Perhaps I should start a poll and see how many people favor the idea.

Not much more to report today so I’ll close and post this. Thanks for the comments from my readers.

March 2009 post from Haiti # 1

2009-03-12T06:03:00.001-05:00

Hello from Haiti March 2009

Wednesday March 11, 2009. After a 2 hour nap, I am awake and anxious to start blogging.
I need to start yesterday on the way to the Greater Peoria airport. Normally I drive a car out to the airport and leave it because when I return to Peoria from Haiti it is often very late at night and I hate to have anyone sit out there to bring me to my home. One of our cars chose not to cooperate with me and the inside driver’s door handle broke so it went into the shop on Monday and was not repaired by the time I needed to leave on Tuesday. My patient and loving wife, Donna, drove me to the airport. However, we had to make two stops along the way. I had a bank deposit for FOTCOH to drop off and some plastic totes from Alwan Pharmacy to return along the way. We were about to pull into the bank drive-up window when my cell phone rang. It was an automated call from American Airlines telling me that my flight from Peoria to Dallas-Forth Worth had been canceled and that I was to call the 800 number to rebook the flight. So I called American Airlines from the bank parking lot and the agent told me that the flight was still on. What a strange beginning of a Haiti trip, I thought. When we arrived at the airport we found that is under construction so I parked near the arrivals area on the lower level, and in the rain, dragged the two 50 lb bags of medications, food and supplies along with my carry-on bag and my brief case into the lower level of the terminal. Donna parked the car and helped me drag the bags to the American Airlines ticket counter. I was expecting that my flight would be cancelled and I was mentally trying to figure out how I would get to Fort Lauderdale by early Wednesday morning to make my connecting flight to Port-Au-Prince. The ticket agent assured me that the flight was still going out and that the airplane was inbound from DFW and about to land in Peoria. So, without weighing my two bags, she checked me in and handed the bags over to the TSA agent for security check. Darn, I could have maybe packed 55 lbs in stead of 50 lbs in each bag. Donna agreed to sit with me for awhile as the security checkpoint was closed. As we sat there, a large number of people passed by and all headed for the airport snack bar. Wow, I thought, that is unusual for that many people to get off a plane and head for the snack bar instead of their cars. I learned form overhearing on of the flight attendants very loud cell phone conversation that the plane had been bound for Cedar Rapids, Iowa and had to divert to Peoria due to bad weather in Cedar Rapids. Here was another strange occurrence which made me wonder what was in store for me that day. The checkpoint opened after awhile I kissed Donna goodbye and proceeded to the gate area. Our flight came in on time and we left Peoria right on time. The flight to Dallas was smooth and a tail wind got us into DFW early. We landed at the A terminal and my flight left from the C terminal. The Sky Rail system made it easy to move from place to place so I found a food court and ate a wrap sandwich for a quick supper. The plane to Fort Lauderdale left on time and I was seated in the middle of the plane. Most of the surrounding passengers were headed to Fort Lauderdale to get on a cruise ship except the lady in front of me with two small children. One of the children was a baby girl of about two and the second was another girl about 5 years old. The mother was busy with the smaller child so the older girl and I played a peek-a-boo game all the way to DFW. It made this Grandpa happy and kept the child laughing and giggling all the way there.
American Airlines had checked my two bags all the way to Haiti so when I got off the plane I headed for the courtesy phone to call the Day’s Inn where I had a reservation so that the shuttle would pick me up. I spoke with a woman named Diane who advised me to go to the lower level of Terminal 4 and wait by the second blue sign. Cool, I thought, that is a short walk outside so I walked to the place she described and waited and waited. After ½ hour I went back in and called but got no answer at the hotel. That was not a good sign so I waited 5 minutes and tried the number again. There was still no answer. After another several tries and 10 minutes later, I spoke with a man who told me that I was waiting in the wrong area and that I was to proceed back towards terminal 3 where the bus to the parking garage kept coming and going from. I arrived at that area and in about another ½ hour here came my shuttle. So, to my team mates who might also be staying at that hotel, which I had advised them had a late night-early morning shuttle, here is a bit of advice. You can call 954-463-2500 which is the hotel phone number and ask to be transferred to extension 158. That is the cell phone of the shuttle driver who will give you clear and exact directions as to how to find where she can pick you up. If you should arrive at Terminals 1 or 2, and I know some of you are coming in on Southwest Airlines which is located in those terminals, the shuttle driver will tell you where the pick up point is for those terminals. I was tired when I reached the hotel and I was given room 404. That meant that I had to drag my bags up 3 flights of stairs. No problem I thought, until I reached the last landing and realized that this stair climbing with luggage is work.
The room was okay but quite cool so I shut down the air conditioner and prepared for bed. Here is another tip for anyone using that hotel: Ask for an inside room. My room fronted Broward Avenue at I-95 and the traffic noise all night long was terrible. I hardly slept a wink all night long and had not slept well at home the night before. I got up around 5 PM, showered and read the Peoria Journal Star on-line addition to pass the time. I had hoped that the free breakfast bar would be open before I caught the 7:00 AM return shuttle to the airport but I was informed that it would not be open till 7:00 and that was the final answer. I had the same shuttle driver that brought me there last night and we had pleasant conversation back to the airport and she was kind enough to give me the telephone information that I passed along a little bit ago.
I had my boarding pass and proceeded to security. That was a joke. It was filled with Haitians and none of the TSA agents spoke Kreole. If you have never traveled with Haitians, you may not understand why that is a problem. First of all they all had carry-on’s that exceeded the requirements. Second, many of the carry-ons were metal cooking pots or store boxes that were taped together with duct tape. The man in front of me had a suitcase filled with cell phones. Try to get a Haitian to follow directions in English when all they understand is Kreole and you will quickly see what I am trying to convey. And then there was the mother with two small children. The oldest, around 4 years, kept wandering out of line. The mother could not find the boarding passes that she had shown another agent just moments before. She had problems getting the children to remove their shoes. There was, of course, only one line and the TSA agents were grumbling that only ½ of their fellow workers had bothered to show up for work this morning. I estimate that it took almost ½ hour to get through the security checkpoint. Lots of people got frustrated but there was nothing anyone could do about it except laugh at the comedic scene.
After I passed the security checkpoint I headed for the nearest coffee vendor and found, to my delight, that Dick and Barb were there enjoying their morning coffee. We had a nice visit and proceeded to the gate area.
When I made my reservation, I assumed that the plane would be an Airbus 300 like the airline flies from Miami. I was wrong. The plane was a 737 so my idea of sitting in the rear of the plane and exiting the rear of the plane was foiled as there would be no rear exiting on this flight. I sat in row 27 of 30 on the aisle seat and waited for my seat mates. I’ll bet that you can guess who they were. The winner is: the mother with the two small girls. Oh my, what was I in for on this flight. This story is getting long and I have lots more to tell so I’ll just say it was a pleasant flight. I was entertained by Dora the Explorer, helped the lady to fill out her paperwork for immigration and customs, and helped her get the kids off the plane and into the terminal for the immigration line. I never saw her after that.
The immigration line was surprisingly short. The agents were efficient and prompt and when I arrived at baggage claim, the bags were coming off the plane. I have discovered over the years that the Haitian baggage handlers could care less about getting tour bags to you and it seems to take forever for them to unload cart after cart of bags. Of course, mine were on the last cart. Dick had rented two carts for my bags and those of his and Barb’s. Boyer, ou main man, arrived at baggage claim and we loaded my two bags on the bottom of the cart because they contained the medications and placed the bags of Dick and Barb containing food items on top in case customs stopped us for a bag search. That is another tip for my team mates and here is and additional tip. DO NOT wear your FOTCOH T Shirt when coming into Port-au-Prince. We believe that the shirts are a RED FLAG to the customs people that we are likely carrying drugs. So wear something that blends in with the crowd and that may get you a free pass to go like we had yesterday. We sailed out of the customs area to smiles and hand shakes. Be prepared to surrender your white customs forms to the clerk. Ours was busy talking with another and did not even glance at mine. Also be prepared to surrender your baggage claim tags to the agent who merely grabs them and does no checking whatsoever.
Boyer had driven over in the Toyota truck and Dick insisted that I ride up front so I could see more on our trip over the mountains. It was some trip. For those of you who have ridden with Boyer, you will understand. He drives a break neck speed, cuts corners short, passes cars with a short safety margin, and so on. There are 365 curves on the 81 Km trip from Port-au-Prince to Jacmel and my head snapped at each turn and my stomach churned inside as we raced on. I was very happy to see Jacmel bay from the top of the mountain road. We stopped at St. Cyr pharmacy to pick up some wine. So, dear Holly, they did not have a pinot grigio, only Sauvignon Blanc and a Chardonnay. I did find some Cote Du Rhone myself and a Rose wine for you. By the way, Holly was the only person who informed me of their wine preference but now you know our limited wine selection here in Jacmel.
It was well passed lunch time by now and Dick chose to have lunch at the Hotel Cap Lamondue which is one of my favorites. When we arrived we encountered a large party of Blancs who did not seem overly friendly. We greeted the owner, a nice lady that I have met before and sat down at the table. There had been no time for a rest room break so I took off in search of the men’s room. When I passed the group I noticed that many of them had on Notre Dame University apparel and wondered about that. In a short while, one of the group came over and introduced himself. His name is Mark Walsh MD and his group was in Leogane on a fact finding mission for the University. He explained that Father Tom Streit, CSC is w world renowned scientist who received a $ 5 million dollar grant from the Bill Gates Foundation to eradicate Filarias in Haiti. Dr Mark is an emergency room physician in South Bend and soon we met several other doctors from the team. We were informed, much to our dismay, that the 250 bed hospital in Leogane had closed and the ND group was searching for a place to work out of. And so, perhaps we have stumbled on another group who can work with us, provide us with medical volunteers, and maybe tap into additional sources of donations. We encouraged them to follow us out to the clinic and they though that was a good idea. It was spoiled by the fact that it took forever to get their food and made us wait also for our order so it was a long lunch break and the group needed to return to Leogane. Yes, for my Peoria readers, many of the group spoke highly of our own Bishop Jenky. So, my friend Bruce Steiner, please be sure to contact out good Bishop and pass along the greetings. Please!
Ah, at last we arrived at the clinic. Things are in great shape. I have managed to put away most of the shipments that have arrived. The pharmacy is in the best condition I have ever seen so a hearty thank you goes out to Gary Alwan, Jess Streif, and Sharon Doran for a job well done. Things are clearly marked, neatly organized, and some of the medications I will need right away appear to be packaged and ready to dispense. Thank you, thank you, and thank you. Barb, Dick and I worked till about 6:30 and stopped for a Prestige on the third floor balcony to watch the daylight end. We sat on the East side and enjoyed the slight breeze, the sound of the goats, the view of the white cranes and a brown pelican, the fires on the mountain, and the taste of the Prestige beer.
We ate so late a lunch and so heavy a meal we decided that we could do without supper. Incidentally, I had the Lambi Kreole which was excellent along with rice and beans, no pomme frites (French fries) for lunch.

So, here I sit hunting and pecking my way through my adventures and I am getting sleepy so I’ll close and post this in the morning. I do need to thank you for reading this. Even more important, I need to thank you all for your prayers, your support, and your encouragement. All of those drive me to do this work for the Haitian people.

March Mission to Haiti 2009

2009-03-08T11:44:00.001-05:00

Hello again. It is almost time for me to leave for Haiti on another exciting medical mission. This is my ninth trip with The Friends of the Children of Haiti. I am almost all packed and ready to go. We have gathered all of the supplies, medications, baby formula, children’s vitamins, some nutritional supplements, and other assorted odds and ends. We have them packed in bags and totes and each one weighs around 50 lbs. Members of the team will transport them as checked baggage on the airplane.

This mission team is made up of members from Washington State, Minnesota, Illinois, and Ohio. Here is a list:

Team Leader: Lynn Garber RN, Washington State Experienced
Assistant team leader: Katie Koehler RN, Illinois Experienced
Assistant team leader: Laurie Tinker RN, Washington State Experienced
Maureen Barta RN, Washington State Experienced
Ron Bush MD, Ohio on his second FOTCOH mission (January 2009)
Laurie (Mickey) Byrne RN, Washington State First FOTCOH mission
Jaime Cercone MD, Illinois First FOTCOH mission
Zechariah Crutchfield, Washington State First FOTCOH mission non medical
Linda Damery RN, Illinois Experienced
Peggy Grebstad RN, Washington State First FOTCOH Mission First mission
JoAnna Forwell Nd, Washington State First FOTCOH Mission
Tracy Higdon, Washington State Washington State First FOTCOH Mission
Marlena Marie RN, Washington State Her second FOTCH trip (September 2008)
Nancy Holly Melroe RN, Minnesota First FOTCOH Mission
Ed Monroe R.PH, Illinois FOTCOH Mission
Barb Smith RN, Washington State First FOTCOH Mission
Margo Spence RN, Washington State First FOTCOH Mission

This team has endured In spite of the many road blocks that were encountered. Late last fall, Maureen’s husband expired after a long battle with cancer. Earlier this year, Lynn Garber’s husbands passed away from a liver problem. We had a physician for the team, then lost a physician, then gained a physician and now I believe that we are stabilized. We have a physician from Ohio who has worked in our clinic once at last months’ clinic. I am working part time due to his family’s plans. The team was also short of funds needed to purchase the medications’ and supplies but a very generously sponsor agreed to cover the approximately $ 20,000.00 that the clinic costs which is over and above the proximately $12,500 that is paid for by the team member. Each team member from Illinois and the one from Ohio will be carrying down with them as checked baggage.
Some of this could have been avoided but the medications were late getting here as I was out of touch while flying in an airplane.
There are likely some more stories I could tell but I will try to bring some joy into future blogs as I intend to tease the team. As you can see we have only two non medical members. Also we have 9 first timers and 2 second timers so this year should be interesting.
I am travelling ahead of the team in order to try a new experiment. I plan to provide refill medications for 150 patients prior to the full clinic. This is being done so that the medical providers will not be bogged down with refill only patients and can spend more time treating the sicker patient population. This team will also be the first to view the results of the Medika Mamba nutritional supplement on the failure to thrive infants that were started on the program in January. Early reports indicate that the supplement is doing as expected and the babies are gaining weight. We hope that we can obtain additional donations of money in order to expand that program to more of the starving Haitian children. The product is made in Cap Haitian and it could be made in Cyvadier if we are able to grow the program here at FOTCOH. Medika Mamba is a product that contains peanut butter, powdered milk, vegetable oil, and vitamins. I will have more information to pass along in the next few days about Medika Mamba.
The January team reported that many of the Haitians complained of food shortages. I expect that we will encounter even more hunger as I understand that food prices are extremely high and the price of gasoline has risen even higher than it was last year.

Gustav, the Hurricane

2008-08-30T18:07:00.001-05:00

The following is an update from the President of the Friends of the Children of Haiti. I am posting this to my blog. The damage to the clinic is believed to be about $ 10,000.00 USD. There is a medical team poised to arrive at the clinic in a little over 1 week. Please keep Dick & Barb in your prayers. The board will have to scramble to raise the needed dollars and then some.

Ed

8/26/08

Hurricane Gustav made landfall this afternoon just west of Jacmel bringing
90 mph winds and very heavy rainfall to southern Haiti.

I just spoke with Boyer who reports that the clinic has sustained some
damage with water throughout the building and damage to the water tanks and
antennas on the roof. The full extent of the damage is not yet known as the
storm has yet to dissipate to allow for a full assessment.

Dick & Barb Hammond were scheduled to arrive in Haiti today, but their
flight was cancelled, so they're still in Miami waiting-out the storm.

8/27/08

I have been in touch with Boyer again today who reports that it's still
raining in Cyvadier and that he has not been able to fully assess the damage
at the clinic yet. But here's what he does know at this point: We've lost at
least one water tank (on the roof) and antennae. The condition of the
generator is still not fully known as it's covered by a fallen tree with
wiring exposed in standing water. All plywood that had been used to cover
windows was blown-off by wind during the storm along with one door. He says
that there is water damage throughout the building but he doesn't really
know the extent of that damage to fixtures and contents.

Everyone in the immediate neighborhood appears to be OK although nearly all
homes were flooded.

Dick and Barb Hammond are still in Miami awaiting the next available flight
to Haiti.

8/28
Dick & Barb Hammond were successful in getting a flight from Miami to Haiti
today and are staying at a hotel in Port-au-Prince tonight.

The condition of the road through the mountains is still questionable so
they hope to catch a MAF flight PAP to Jacmel tomorrow.

8/30/08

Dick & Barb were able to get a MAF flight from PAP to Jacmel and have
arrived at the clinic where they are assessing the damage.

Dick described the road leading to the clinic as "devastated" by flood
waters, also, the grounds surrounding the clinic.

Dick & Boyer have been able to get the generator started but don't know how
long that (fix) will hold. They're also making every effort to get the water
system repaired and Internet communications restored.

Barb has begun the massive clean-up + dry-out effort within the clinic.
Doors, windows, appliances and other building contents that have been
damaged will be addressed on an on-going basis as funds allow.

Dick has confirmed that the current medication inventory at the clinic is in
good shape, (thanks to Boyer's great effort to move it above flood waters)
and that they hope to move the European medication order from PAP to the
clinic early next week.

Dick expressed his resolve that they are "going to be ready" for the Sept.
team's arrival.

Thursday-Friday July 24 25

2008-07-27T13:06:00.002-05:00

Hello from Peoria again.
I thought I would finish the blog with some of the details of our last two days.

Early Thursday morning we awoke to a very pleasant surprise. Dan had prepared a breakfast of scrambled eggs with bacon bits and onions and it was very tasty. I told Dan that he needed to make one without the onions as Jamie had been passing all of her onions to my plate each time she found one. Regardless, I do not ever recall having scrambled eggs during any on my previous missions. I missed the hash browns but you can’t have everything. Ha!
We had planned to see patients on Thursday for one half day. Jamie’s burn patient returned and she was please with the patient’s progress and the care given the child by the child’s aunt. We did discover a medication error where a patient received Tylenol for Tegretol but manage to get that corrected before the patient left the clinic grounds. We also had an incident with the treatment of Esperidon, the clinic caretaker. Some of the older FOTCOH people know him as “Don” or “Asparagus” as he and his large family are a source of conversation on each team I have been a part of. Jamie became very angry and stormed into the pharmacy. I figured that would be a great time to let Gary handle the issue and he allowed Jamie to vent her anger at him. When she left, Gary took a short break and returned as if nothing had happened. Jamie came back a little later and apologized to Gary and all was well in Haiti once more. With all of the pressures, heat & humidity, living with several strangers, being away from home in a Third World country, I am always surprised that people seldom get angry or upset so a little venting is sometimes needed. We ended the clinic by treating 118 patients on Thursday, making the grand total of 2005 patients for the mission. I know it was hard on the crowd control people to close the gate for the last time.
Dan had a great lunch for us and Sue had a short team meeting. Then it was time for inventory and putting the clinic to bed. I had great helpers in the stockroom, the packaging room, and the dispensing area and the inventory went very well. Inventory of the pharmacy and medical supplies is required so we can restock for the next mission. Inventory is never fun but we try to make it as fun as we possibly can.In the pharmacy, I had saved a lot of stock bottles with tight seals and also hundreds of desiccants. We used these to package the bags of prepackaged medications that remained at the end of the clinic so there would be some protection from the heat and humidity. After the inventory and clean up was finished, several took off for 1 more swim at the beach, some began to pack up their gear for the trip home, and some just read quietly. I spent the time tabulating the pharmacy inventory and checking on some items where I questioned the counts or could not read the hand writing. It is not the most exciting of tasks and I know that I dozed off at least twice during that period of time. I have since audited my records and made the necessary corrections that my dozing caused.I did not sleep well the last few nights in Haiti. I must have been ready to get home.
Our final meal is always worth waiting for as the Haitian girls. Neva and Andreta prepare a sauce with lobster, onions, tomatoes and other herbs and it is really good eating. After dinner, we took the bags that would be our checked luggage down to the pharmacy waiting area where they would be taken by truck early Friday morning (4 AM) to the main airport in PAP. Most of the team ended the evening on the roof gazing at stars. Come to find out that Jan & Jon had written a book on stars and Chris was also quite expert at picking out stars and constellations. Being further south in Haiti than in Peoria, the Southern Cross was visible and many of the team had never seen the Southern Cross in the night sky. It was a great way to end our day.
All were up early on Friday. Dan fed us one last breakfast of oatmeal. We did the usual routine of getting to the Jacmel airport very early. I did not pay much attention to the time but it seemed that we were there for over 1 hour before the Tortug plane arrived. Diedudone was there to see us off, as I knew that he would be. An older gentleman arrived. Eric seemed to know him as did Dick and Barb. He presented Dick with a container of eggs. That was funny as Dick and Barb were coming with us on the trip to Peoria. Carol, Bruce and Dan were staying back to do the laundry and shut down the clinic. They will be returning to Peoria on Tuesday. So Dick gave the eggs to Dan. I could just visualize TSA or USA Customs discovering eggs in Dick’s carry on. That would be a scene.
Our plane arrived and we wrote our names and birth dates on the manifest. Our carry on’s had been searched by a Haitian policeman and he passed the wand over the fronts and backs of each passenger before we could board the plane. The plane ride over the mountain was very hot and smelly. All of us were sweating profusely and the smell of the aviation fuel was nauseating. When we landed in PAP, the pilot opened up the front windows and all were glad to feel the breeze. We disembarked the plane and passed through the small airport in a hurry only to walk to the back of the rutted and wet parking lot to our truck which had brought the luggage over the mountains. We climbed into the truck for our usual exciting ride to the main airport. The driver managed to brake without warning and we all slide into the person next to us and then into the bags. It was just another Haitian memory for our memory bank account.
PAP airport was the usual mob scene of pushing and shoving to get inside the airport. We started to get into a long line and when we finally reached the first check point, Sue collected our passports and we gathered at an area near the AA ticket counter while she checked all of us and our luggage in with AA. That process went smoothly as did our passage through Haitian immigration and security checkpoint. Then it was time for one last Prestige beer and the famous Haitian Hot dog. Some folks purchased rum in the 5 pack carrying case and this trip there was the 15 star (best) rum. I had purchased 3 star and 5 star rum in Jacmel and David, Jan and Gary helped me get it back to Peoria as prizes for our upcoming fund raiser, the annual FOTCOH golf outing. We had lots of time in the souvenir shops. Gary found what he was looking for. He collects pharmacy mortars & pestles from all over when he travels and they had one in the shops.We went down to the departure lounge when our plane arrived and passed through the third security checkpoint. This one was manned by AA and we had to remove the laptops from our carry on and also remove our shoes. We waited quite awhile before our plane was available for boarding and we did not leave PAP on time but rather at least 30 to 40 minutes late. We had a fairly short layover time in Miami facing us. There was a first on this trip as Dick and Barb managed to fly First Class from PAP to Miami and then on to Chicago. They enjoyed that privilege greatly. The flight was smooth and we landed right at the immigration area. On my last mission our gate was a very long walk to immigration. We breezed through immigration and arrived at baggage claim. We had to reclaim our bags, pass through customs and then pass our bags back to AA after they had cleared customs. It is here that the people who purchased rum at the PAP airport can put it in their checked bags. We were told to go to carousel # 8 and our flight was posted on that bulletin board. Sometime later, it was announced that our bags were at carousel # 2 so we had to fight our way past a lot of people to get to carousel # 2. Some of our bags had been off loaded so we had to wait until all the bags arrived to collect our things. Amanda took of to return to Seattle, Washington. The time for our departure to Chicago was approaching rapidly when we finally exited baggage claim only to find out we had to go t another terminal and even worse, near the end of the terminal for our next plane. Plus, we now had to pas though TSA security. We were spread out in the TSA area when a TSA agent called us over to the first class check in and rushed us through so we could make our plane. We still had to play OJ Simpson and run through the length of the D concourse to get on our Chicago flight. That run was hard on Dick, I am sure. Fortunately, AA was holding our flight and we all made it before they closed the doors. Our flight to Chicago was a bit bumpy due to some storms in Florida but we manage to arrive in Chicago early. Too early, it turned out as our gate was not open so we sat in the penalty box for a bit before taxing to our gate. Most of us stopped at Chili’s for a quick bite of food. Jon took a stroll all the way to Gate G 11 to see the 8:30 Plane to Peoria off. That caused us a worry as we thought he had gotten lost. Our gate was G 4 and we left Chicago nearly on time and had a quick flight to Peoria, a long wait for our bags, some quick good byes and a fast drive home.
In reflection, this was a really great team to be a part of. Everyone worked really hard, we all got along well, we had no major medical problems with team members, some discomfort from the heat and humidity, few mosquitoes & other varmints, and over all a memorable experience for all of us.
I want to thank you for reading this. I did enjoy all of your comments. I especially like the fact that I was able to link you to the pictures. I still hope to put captions on a few and also to post more when I get them from other team members. Lastly, I would appreciate any and all support you could give to FOTCOH so that we can continue to care for our Haitian brothers and sisters. You can get more information about the sponsorship program or donations at our website : www.fotcoh.org
God bless you!
Ed

Wednesday July 23, 2008

2008-07-26T09:50:00.000-05:00

There is no intent yet. The modem was not working, as I suspected. The repair man came and installed the new modem but he did not have the authority to contact Direct way to initialize the new modem, so the team is still frustrated.

The FOTCOH Pharmacy closed at 2:20 PM today after 196 patients were seen. I took off with Boyer into town to visit the Payless pharmacy in Jacmel. BTW, the stop light at Ambians was working and most of the people obeyed it. Yes, I did say most of the people and I did not get to witness a wreck. The pharmacy is located near the police station and right across from the cannon. With those landmarks, you should not be able to miss finding that hole in the well of a store. The clerk on duty told us we had to talk with the owner and he was upstairs past the guard. So up the stairs we cautiously climbed. I was not sure what I had gotten myself into. Surprisingly, Boyer did not seem to know the guard nor the owner so they talked for quite awhile as Boyer explained who this crazy Blanc was who had entered the inner sanctum of his office. The Gentleman spoke just a little English and told Boyer that I would be welcome to look around at his downstairs inventory. He even provided paper and pen so I could write down names. The front of the pharmacy is a door where the counter (a small board) blocks the customer at the door sill. The medications are in cabinets with sliding glass doors and arranged alphabetically by disease state. He had a surprisingly deep inventory of all of the major categories. I look ate the boxes and they wee almost all from the Dominican Republic. So it is likely he is purchasing his medications from that drug wholesaler who called on me here at the FOTCOH clinic back in March of this year. I wanted to go there so that I could advise Dick where to get some items for patients that we might not have here at the clinic but could be purchased in town. Drex from the Christala Bell story is who told me about Payless Pharmacy. It is always interesting to ride with Boyer as you never know where he will take you, who he will be meeting, or what will happen next. We picked up a lady at the FOTCOH patient staging area and dropped her off in downtown Jacmel. We drove down one street and stopped. A young girl came up to Boyer’s window and he handed her money and we left. No, I have no idea what the money was for. Then we went to the pharmacy. After the pharmacy, we drove around Jacmel until we came to an intersection that was piled with garbage and the workers were cleaning the gutters of the street and adding the garbage to the pile in the middle of the intersection. Also, at that intersection was a 5 foot square hole on one side of the intersection so we had to navigate between the mound of garbage and the very edge of the hole. I love Haitian roads. Ha. Next we drove up a road that resembles the rocky path from the main road back to the clinic except this as in the middle of the town. We drove to the top of the hill , turned around and drove ½ way back down the hill before we stopped at a non descript shop where three men were seated. Boyer rolled down the window and handed the man several Haitian large denomination bills which the man counted. Boyer’s cell phone rang and he talked for awhile then spoke to the man who handed back the money. Something was going on but this Blanc has no clue. Next door to the non descript shop was a building that looked like a hotel and several young ladies emerged in rather seductive clothes. I wonder what that was all about. Next we traveled on several narrow back streets, not bothering with stop signs, and just a toot of the horn to warn anyone who might be at the intersection that we intended to take the right of way. After I became totally lost we stopped at a house and Boyer called on his cell phone to someone. Soon a young lady appeared at his window. She had very large breasts that were scantily covered so I chose to be a good boy and watch the workers at a construction project across the street. I’ll stop at that point. Soon we were on our way back to the clinic or so I thought. We still had one more stop to make on the main road. We stopped at some store, climbed the curb with the truck and a young man took the empty case of soda bottles out of our truck and replaced it with a full case of Pepsi & Seven Up. This time no money changed hands. That still baffles me.

When we got back to the clinic they were all closed up and it was time for the beach for some and almost time for a shower for me. Grant and I packed up Lisa’s treasures but we failed to pack her walking sticks so I told her to open the case and put them in. I also helped Gary pack his treasures in a box. We will place the box in a bag as checked luggage as there is an embargo by American Airlines on boxes and tubs for the month of July. So we put the boxes in canvas bags as they take them that way. It is all very strange here most of the time.

Tuesday July 22

2008-07-26T09:48:00.000-05:00

Wednesday afternoon::Important note before I begin, we have been without internet all day long so I am not to be blamed for lack of posts to the blog

Hello. It is 4 AM and I have been awake and sweating in my bed for awhile so I may as well get up, get out on the balcony where there is a slight breeze, and do something productive. I have been sleeping on the third floor in the small bedroom with a large fan blowing on me yet I am continually drenched in sweat all night long. I have yet to use a top sheet this entire mission and that is a first for me as I have always used the top sheet overnight on all previous missions. It is not so much the heat as it is the stuffy humidity that seems to bother me. Papa Dick is also up and prowling around. I will be very glad to soon see my wife and my bed, but in that order.

Yesterday saw the return of the Haitian G I miseries for some of the team but it usually is only a 24 hour bug with mild tummy upset and a few loose stools. I will not name names so as to avoid family worries.

I noticed that the Peoria area had some bad looking (on radar) storms on Monday and wondering if there was much damage. I did chat on line with David Coleman on Tuesday night. He was here last July and plans on being here next July.

We had more job switches yesterday and every one adapts well to their new tasks. I am very proud of this team. We are a little stressed by the numbers of patients. There is a crowd at the gate even at this early hour. Speaking of numbers, here are the patient counts by days so far: Tuesday 227, Wednesday 290, Thursday 280, Friday 283, Saturday 118, Monday 276, and Tuesday 207 or about 1700 patients. It appears we are on target for our 2000 patients and maybe a few more.

Here is a note to previous team members: this team is just like all the rest as we have clean laundry stacked on the tables for days on end. So far, I have managed to find all of mine and take it to my room. All of the new team members have pitched in for dishes and laundry duties and that is a good thing.

I have failed to mention Lisa’s gift to the team and I apologize. Lisa paid for our meal at Ambians on Saturday night in spite of the strong protest put up by Papa Dick. Thank you again Lisa. That was really a nice gesture. I think she might a=have also paid a bar bill at Son Sons.

BTW, we finished early yesterday so I have to do a bit of bragging. On the May mission, Mark Purcell was the pharmacist. He sent me an email that he was done in the pharmacy at 2:30 PM on at Tuesday. We managed to beat that record by 30 minutes as we were finished and cleaned up in the pharmacy by 2:00 PM. That is really amazing to me but it shows how great Carol, Grant, and Gary to work with.

Saturday morning July 26

2008-07-26T09:39:00.002-05:00

Hello from Peoria. You may have been wondering why I have been so silent. We awoke on Wednesday morning to find that we no longer had internet service. We tried every thing we could think of to remedy the situation but had no success. We finally determined that the internet modem (surfboard) was not working as there were only 2 of the 5 led's burning and it felt extremely hot. Papa Dick called the service man and he came out on Wednesday afternoon and replaced the modem. He told us he would contact Hughes Net who is the satellite internet service what the new IP address was for the new modem and we would be up and running soon. When we had not heard from him by Thursday morning, Papa Dick called his boss, Hoodrich, to find out what the problem was. Well, it seems that Hughes Net switched satellites and are using a satellite that does not have a strong enough signal to connect to Haiti. Hence we had no internet. I will post what I have written and had intended to post on Wednesday. Sometime, later this weekend, I hope to write about our Thursday and Friday experiences. But, for now, I plan to relax and visit with my wife and family.

Monday afternoon July 21, 2008

2008-07-21T20:25:00.000-05:00

Hello on a muggy afternoon. It is almost 6 PM and dinner will be soon do I must hurry this post and that ii not a good thing. Pharmacy closed at 4 PM today but I have been working in Dick’s palm pilot and playing with a new computer that was donated by Bill Knight and Terry Bibo. It is from “One Laptop for One Child” and is really neat. There is no operating manual as they want you to download the information from their website.

First off, I want to report that Gary has email Lori back home and read her reply and sent along another one. I understand that is some sort of a milestone. He also sent an email to his son but we have not heard back from him yet. I am really enjoying hearing from my wife, Donna, on this mission. I am proud of her internet ability.

This afternoon, my sponsor child and his father came for a visit around mid afternoon and I had time for a short visit. I’m not sure he remembered me until I gave him the picture of the two of us that was taken in March of this year. I did give him the pictures that my grandchildren sent to home as well as their picture that I brought down for him.
Yes, I did get tears in my eyes just as it was predicted. Eric came by with his camera so I’ll have some pictures soon.

We have been teasing Grant and MT a lot. Grant had a rough morning and worked with Chris in the lab. I wanted him to experience other parts of the mission. He returned to the pharmacy at the end of the lab. He is a great help.
I did get an email from Sharon Doran reminding me of the August 4 major fund raising event at Arrowhead golf course. She is looking for volunteers and the chairman of the event is looking for golfers. I would be happy to connect you with them if you are interested.

It seems we have a patient or two after we close. Jamie had to stitch up a little boy’s head around 5 PM tonight. She is testing the power of the Lidocaine gel that I had in the pharmacy. She tells me that it keeps her thumb num for days.
The young ones went to the roof top for a sun tan. I just spent the last half hour star gazing. There is no moon and one can see millions of stars, a few planes, and an occasional shooting star.

We are enjoying Dan’s fine cooking. Tonight’s meal was black bean sauce and white rice, served with avocados, fresh tomatoes and sweet onions. It was yummy.

We had a pharmacy issue today on one of the last patients hat Jamie saw. It seems that Roger, our Haitian helper read the word Tegretol ( for seizure control;) as Tylenol and dispensed the Tylenol. Fortunately Jamie alertly caught it before she left the area. On that same note, we are getting low on our lowest dose of the calcium channel blockers so we will need to make some adjustments to that. I hope to start the dental inventory tomorrow after clinic so that is out of the way. We are really making a dent in the sore room inventory and it is clearing out so we can get it ready for inventory and for the incoming shipment for the next two clinics.
Roger brought in a CD from Colson Mores family that I am to take back to Peoria with me for Colson. I brought down my laptop to make sure it would play and it is a nice CD. I left the laptop plugged in and played Neil Diamond, Amy Grant, and Phantom of the Opera tunes that I have on this laptop. We got to do a little jiving to the music today.

The last thing I want to mention tonight is seeing Christala Belle, She is very healthy, a little shy around strangers, and very beautiful. We managed to spend a few minutes with her and none of us cried. She fell asleep so they wanted to get her back home. That is a wonderful ending to a potentially tragic start in life.

Time to get this posted. You are in our thoughts and prayers.

Monday morning July 21, 2008

2008-07-21T07:10:00.002-05:00

Good morning from Haiti. The sun is up, I have fixed the internet connection, I have heard from my grand daughter, and life is good. The air is still and the satellite picture shows no storms in our area so it will be another hot and humid day in Haiti. It will be just another day of doing what we came here to do. I want to repeat that I am very impressed with the member of this team. They all work together well and work very hard, and they are all getting along well. It is hard to remember that we have really only known some of the team members for a little over 1 week as every seems very comfortable with each other.
Yesterday started off with Bruce leading a prayer service out on the west balcony. Jon Wagner has managed to get the very old guitar to sound brand new with new guitar strings and some TLC. So, future teams, please take note that we have a working guitar-Hello Josh Bradshaw!! After the prayer service we had a great pancake and bacon breakfast. A special thank you to Dan, our cook and general do what ever needs done person. He has kept this team well fed and happy. Thanks Dan Steiner!!!!! One of the benefits of having a second pharmacist is that I get to do the dishes. On most missions, I get booted out of that job by some one or another. I have managed to do the dishes now twice so far and I enjoy the opportunity.

As we relaxed after our breakfast, Emiel, the lobster man, came to the clinic with a huge lobster. I hope to insert a picture right here, if it works. If it does not work, I have posted it on the Picasa web album. The tail, after Emiel prepared it, weighed 987 Grams on the pharmacy scale. It went with us to be cooked at the beach and it was very tasty. Note-the picture did not upload. I'll try again later.....

I am sure that many of you notice that in my haste to communicate that I often make a few grammatical mistakes and spelling errors. Lynn Garber is not here to tease me so Jamie has undertaken the role after I failed to correctly name her as the provider of the screaming baby in a previous blog. I have corrected that mistake but I’ll bet she will find some more to tease me with.
The time after breakfast and beach departure seemed to drag so when 1 PM arrived we were all prepared to go. The ride to Ti Moulage was the usual one however, I feel like there is less traffic on the roads. With the price of fuel reported to be near the $10.00 per gallon I can understand why there is less traffic. The beach was much smaller this trip with the water less that 20-30 yards from our “beach resort”. Initially it was filled with families, then a lot of little boys and near the time to leave, by a group from an orphanage. The restaurants were filled with Haitians and there were no UN personnel in sight. That was an unusual occurrence as in past trips they were the ones on the beach and in the restaurants. We had lots of merchandise to select from. My wife’s favorite merchant, Joseph, was looking all over for her so she would not steal his art by taking a photograph or two. He finally came over and asked me if she was on this trip. Mind you, that photograph issue was now 18 months ago. Perhaps I have a memorable face-NOT!
The waves were the strongest I have ever seen and every one is reporting sand in places on their bodies that have never been exposed to sand before. I know, too much information is reported sometimes. We had our usual feast of fish, the large lobster, pickly & tomatoes, beans and rice and fried plantains. It was as tasty as ever. Our team managed to boost the local economy with their purchases of art, bowls, statues, and paintings. Some of them will be a challenge to protect for the ride back to Peoria.

Near the end of our beach time, I spotted a Blanc by the name of Drex. He and his wife run an orphanage nearby and are the people who brought us the baby that was born last year in the latrine by the name of Christala Belle (I may have spelled her name wrong as I have seen it written several different ways). Drex reported that the baby is doing well so I gathered some of the team who had cared for her last year and lead them over to visit with Drex. Drex will bring the baby to the clinic today along with one of the orphans that may need medical attention. Again, I refer you to the earlier blogs on my site for a more detailed account of that story.

Speaking of stories, I was asked to report on a budding romance between MT and a local man. I do not think that a marriage proposal has been issued like Princess Diana received on the March mission but there is still a few more days left on this trip. Trina-do not start worrying-YET!

MT was busy last night on Facebook. She and I are trying to teach Gary a few internet skills. MT found out that Chris Robinson and I both have a Facebook web page so now we are all connected. I was able to look on my page and view the pictures of my grand daughter’s birthday pool party at my house yesterday. It was almost like being there, so thank you, Cori. Gary’s progress on the computer is coming along well, so far. I do not expect that I will have him fully trained. He did send an email to Lori so I will turn over future training to her.

Breakfast is over and this has taken me much longer to write this because where I sit is the middle of Grand Central Station. And, I am such a fast typist- Ha! So, I’ll post this and get to work.

Sunday morning July 20, 2008

2008-07-20T06:46:00.001-05:00

First off here, I have downloaded 65 more pictures from Becky Reeser’s camera to the Picasa web album. Here is the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/edmonroe316 . I hope you are enjoying the photos. It took several tries yesterday before I could connect and then it took almost 40 minutes to down load the pictures. I just sat out on the balcony and enjoyed the breeze. The breeze has disappeared this morning, it is hot and still. There is a noisy bug (I think that is what is making the sound) somewhere out in the back yard. There are 3 men in a boat fishing out back of the clinic and the waves are very strong so they are bobbing up and down in the boat. That is the morning view from the third floor balcony on the south side. People are sleeping in this morning.

We went to Jacmel yesterday for our relaxation. Boyer and Belany were the tour guides. I think Jamie was our only shopper and she only purchased one item. It is a gift so I will not disclose the nature of the gift. I did not pay attention to how long we shopped. On the way back to Ambians Gary and I spotted a sign for a pharmacy so we asked Belany to come with us. It was closed as was the other two pharmacies we sought out so they must not work on Saturdays. We returned to Ambians and Gary purchased a bottle of 5 star rum and some Pepsi so that was the drink of the hour. Later, Lisa purchased some Chardonnay so I was a happy drinker. Ha! I ate Lambi Creole which is conch I am not sure I have spelled that word correctly) and it was the best prepared serving this year. To explain, this is my third mission for FOTCOH this year. I rode shotgun to and from in Son Son’s tap tap. It has a new coat of paint on the body and on the cage and Papa Dick says he is no longer taking any passengers other than the FOTCOH volunteers. When we got back to the clinic, some people came bringing a girl who had apparently stepped in some glass so Jamie, Chris, and Becky began to minister to her. They made quite a team as the one foot required several stitches to close the wound. I think we finished with her sometime after 9 PM. We had an audience of Haitians observing. Belany must have had too much rum. He sat in a chair in a stupor and fell out of the chair a few times. Boyer promised to get him home. I’ll bet he is hurting this morning. There are no reports of throwing up from any team members overnight. That is a good thing.

I want to wish my grand daughter Molly Gibson a Happy Birthday today. I understand that she is having a pool party at my house. I will be thinking of her and all my family all day long. The news from home is appreciated. I am proud to report that my love, my wife, Donna, has successfully managed to use the email to send me messages and that is a really good thing.

This morning we will have a prayer service followed by a pancake and bacon breakfast. Later we will go yo Ti Moulage beach for an afternoon of swimming, shopping, and a nice meal. As Chris just said, it i so nice to not have to rush around this morning because there a patients at the gate. We saw no one outside the gate when we returned from town last night.
Okay, I have rambled on enough so I’ll post this and do some of my back exercises. The mattress is getting to me.

Saturday afternoon July 19

2008-07-19T13:22:00.005-05:00

Happy Saturday. We finished this morning around 11:00 AM but I do not have the number. I’ll try to get it before I post this update.
Note to Linda Damery: Message delivered and that was fun. I came out to triage where your man works and called out his name, Dieudon. That worried him at the start as to why I would be looking for him. I am usually only out at triage to check weights or to chase Dieudonne with the water gun so he may have been worried that I was coming after him with my trusty squinter. The message back to you is that his wife is doing much better and that the baby will be full term next month and they will bring the baby to the September clinic. We will need to alert Linda and Kent Bryan so that someone in triage takes pictures for you of the family. He reported that, indeed, they lost one of the babies and they are still saddened by that. He thanked me profusely for the message and told me to thank you for thinking of him.
Speaking of babies, we had two hydrocephalic babies come in today and it was very sad. I know the first one really got to Gary and he needed to take a short break. Sometimes, especially down here, you really feel so helpless. On the good side, the first baby was bright and cheerful, very inquisitive, very much in love with his dad, and very healthy. I did not get to see the second baby as I was somewhere else when that baby came through. The same goes for Dory, the little girl who came to Peoria in January for the surgery. I have missed her now for two clinics in a row so I can’t tell you much except the provider who examined her said she had quite the American attitude.

Dr Nelson, our Haitian doctor who works with our surgeon and sometimes as a provider on our teams, came for a short visit last night. He had been in the Dominican Republic for something or another. The DR is where he went to medical school. He will likely join us tonight at Ambians for dinner. He did invite us to come to his clinic for the poor of Jacmel tomorrow morning after church. I do not know if we will make that or not. I had fun stealing his hat off of his head and making him laugh. I have also been doing that to Dieudonne at triage. Nelson took some of our outdated drugs for his clinic.

For those of you who might have been wondering, Eric arrived at the clinic around 10 to 10:30 AM. He tells us that the lovely East breeze that is kicking up the sea caused a few problems for American Airlines and the Missionary Aviation Flyers pilots. So the cool breeze continues today from the East. Yes, I am on the West side of the building-darn it. The wind continues today and the waves a sea are beautiful to behold and I am glad I am not out on it. Rumor has it that the full moon is the cause of this wind. I wonder what effect it will have on Ti Moulage beach tomorrow. The under tow may be so great that we can’t go out very far. Gary brought up the hurricane fan so I’ll get a second good night’s sleep tonight.
From what I can tell from here the link that I posted on the blog for Lisa’s pictures works well. I am trying to load 65 pictures from Becky so you can see some of what we see here. Unfortunately, the internet is not cooperating at this fifth try.

We have run out of vitamins for infants as I knew that we would. I was unable to purchase them until about 1 week before clinic and I could not find the 300 bottles I knew that I would need. I did manage to obtain 100. Note to September and November teams, but the as soon as you can or have some one special order them. We also did not bring enough triple antibiotic ointment. I could only get a few dozen at a good price.
Everything else is going up well and that makes our life easier. We will likely have to do our greasy grind (Griseofulvin) for the small children that cannot swallow a tablet. We are showing the moms to crush the chewable vitamins and give to the small ones.
Jamie’s screaming baby returned today for a dressing change and never cried until Jamie began to apply the last dressing. That was a blessing, but we still had lots of tears today and some major infections today that we gave the Rocephin.

We are still way ahead on pill packing thanks to team members who, without complaining, helped get pills packed so we could get a head start on our mission in the pharmacy. I have two pill packers and 3 interpreters on this mission and I manage to keep the working most of the time.

Okay, I am taking a short break-or it may be a longer one as it is now near time to go to town and all of us are going this trip. I’d better wash up, change out of the scrubs and get with the program. On second thought, I will try to upload this to the blog before we leave.

Saturday afternoon July 19

2008-07-19T13:22:00.000-05:00

Happy Saturday. We finished this morning around 11:00 AM but I do not have the number. I’ll try to get it before I post this update.
Note to Linda Damery: Message delivered and that was fun. I came out to triage where your man works and called out his name, Dieudon. That worried him at the start as to why I would be looking for him. I am usually only out at triage to check weights or to chase Dieudonne with the water gun so he may have been worried that I was coming after him with my trusty squinter. The message back to you is that his wife is doing much better and that the baby will be full term next month and they will bring the baby to the September clinic. We will need to alert Linda and Kent Bryan so that someone in triage takes pictures for you of the family. He reported that, indeed, they lost one of the babies and they are still saddened by that. He thanked me profusely for the message and told me to thank you for thinking of him.
Speaking of babies, we had two hydrocephalic babies come in today and it was very sad. I know the first one really got to Gary and he needed to take a short break. Sometimes, especially down here, you really feel so helpless. On the good side, the first baby was bright and cheerful, very inquisitive, very much in love with his dad, and very healthy. I did not get to see the second baby as I was somewhere else when that baby came through. The same goes for Dory, the little girl who came to Peoria in January for the surgery. I have missed her now for two clinics in a row so I can’t tell you much except the provider who examined her said she had quite the American attitude.

Dr Nelson, our Haitian doctor who works with our surgeon and sometimes as a provider on our teams, came for a short visit last night. He had been in the Dominican Republic for something or another. The DR is where he went to medical school. He will likely join us tonight at Ambians for dinner. He did invite us to come to his clinic for the poor of Jacmel tomorrow morning after church. I do not know if we will make that or not. I had fun stealing his hat off of his head and making him laugh. I have also been doing that to Dieudonne at triage. Nelson took some of our outdated drugs for his clinic.

For those of you who might have been wondering, Eric arrived at the clinic around 10 to 10:30 AM. He tells us that the lovely East breeze that is kicking up the sea caused a few problems for American Airlines and the Missionary Aviation Flyers pilots. So the cool breeze continues today from the East. Yes, I am on the West side of the building-darn it. The wind continues today and the waves a sea are beautiful to behold and I am glad I am not out on it. Rumor has it that the full moon is the cause of this wind. I wonder what effect it will have on Ti Moulage beach tomorrow. The under tow may be so great that we can’t go out very far. Gary brought up the hurricane fan so I’ll get a second good night’s sleep tonight.
From what I can tell from here the link that I posted on the blog for Lisa’s pictures works well. I am trying to load 65 pictures from Becky so you can see some of what we see here. Unfortunately, the internet is not cooperating at this fifth try.

We have run out of vitamins for infants as I knew that we would. I was unable to purchase them until about 1 week before clinic and I could not find the 300 bottles I knew that I would need. I did manage to obtain 100. Note to September and November teams, but the as soon as you can or have some one special order them. We also did not bring enough triple antibiotic ointment. I could only get a few dozen at a good price.
Everything else is going up well and that makes our life easier. We will likely have to do our greasy grind (Griseofulvin) for the small children that cannot swallow a tablet. We are showing the moms to crush the chewable vitamins and give to the small ones.
Lisa’s screaming baby returned today for a dressing change and never cried until Lisa began to apply the last dressing. That was a blessing, but we still had lots of tears today and some major infections today that we gave the Rocephin.

We are still way ahead on pill packing thanks to team members who, without complaining, helped get pills packed so we could get a head start on our mission in the pharmacy. I have two pill packers and 3 interpreters on this mission and I manage to keep the working most of the time.

Okay, I am taking a short break-or it may be a longer one as it is now near time to go to town and all of us are going this trip. I’d better wash up, change out of the scrubs and get with the program. On second thought, I will try to upload this to the blog before we leave.

Friday July 18

2008-07-18T19:48:00.001-05:00

Hello from Haiti. I did not take the time to write last night. When I thought about it, Amanda was using my computer and that was okay with me. I grabbed a Prestige and went up on the roof to get a moon tan. Today is reported to be the day for the full moon but last night’s moon was extremely bright in the Eastern sky. The moon light helps me to not trip over the obstacles on the roof such as the rebar and the wires that hold down the water tanks and satellite dishes. I think I spent over an hour there with Chris, Lisa, Jim, Becky and others. There was also a slight breeze. This morning there is a nice breeze here on the third floor porch. We have not managed to bring down the temperature in the room that Gary and I share here in third. We have fans but they seem to blow hot air. As a consequence, I have not been sleeping as deeply as I usually do and awaken several times over night bathed in sweat. There is an industrial fan in the pharmacy that I may drag upstairs tonight.

Yesterday was baby day. One of the most wonderful aspects of the Friends of the Children Of Haiti is the sponsor child program. For a donation of $ 25.00 per month, a child gets the money for food and education. It is administered by Barb Hammond and our man in Haiti, Boyer Gilles. The families sign for the money so we keep records to let you know that the money is going to the babies and is used as it was intended to be used. I hope to see my sponsored child this mission. I was very busy in March-April when he came for a visit. With Gary here on this trip, I should be able to spend a little more time with the little red head. So please understand that when I tell you that Kelly had a baby in Haiti, I mean that she found one in need of a sponsor and it was a beautiful sight to see the baby in her arms. Grant and Mary Therese got to see the child that their family sponsors. Lisa has some pictures which I hope to download to this blog later.

I do have to report that I spent the better part of two hours yesterday morning cleaning up Papa Dick’s main computer. Somehow we caught something and I found 1 windows open on the desktop on Wednesday night. So I had the luxury of leaving Gary in the pharmacy and working through the available programs on the desktop to clean off what ever we caught. The anti-virus had not been run since late May, so that was the first step.
Then I had to clean out all of the temporary internet files, the history files, and even the cache. For safety I reran the anti-virus scan, rebooted the internet surfboard, and rebooted the system. I managed to gain a little speed on the system and all of that took a lot longer than I hand planned but, again, I had the luxury of being only interrupted twice during that time. On that same thought, having Grant and Carol working in the pharmacy and Gary and I supervising I am having a less stress filled clinic. I do not have to calculate every dose, answer every question, and put out every fire. I could almost call this my clinic vacation time. Ha! Time for breakfast- I’ll be back!

It is now 3:30 PM and we are finished with patients, cleaned up, and sitting outside in a very strong cool breeze. The wind is from the east and the surf is pounding against the rocks. The sea is a different color with a dark blue far our and a light green near the shore. I do not recall ever seeing that before. The internet is out at the present due to the string wind whipping the dish on the roof. I am rushing to write this as I have promised to walk with Jamie out to the rocks behind the clinic and here she is so I’ll stop and pick this up later. I do have some news to report instead of the &%$##^ I have been reporting.

That was a blast. I mean a blast of water from a 6 to 10 foot wake that broke over the tocks as Jamie, Chris and Jim were looking into it. They came away quite soaked, from the blow hole that they were looking into as the water began shooting out. I told Jamie thanks for the wet “t” shirt contest. Jan and Jon were also out there with Carol and Patrick, one of the Haitian children of Esperidon ( Asparagus as we refer to him, he is the caretaker with how many children (?) we can only guess). All made it back safe but some are a little wet.

Dinner last night was enchiladas which some call the Mexican bomb for their effect on a person’s bowels. I know too much information. However, I do want you to know we are dining well and I have heard no complaints and everyone is healthy and we have administered NO iv injections to any team members yet.

I promised to not talk about Jon and Jan in the shower together so please do not tell them that I said it is an every day event. Enough of that information for you, but we do enjoy teasing them, and they enjoy teasing us.

And then there are 4 people in the pharmacy. From previous missions you may know that 16 is way too many for the pharmacy but 6 on a busy day is a nice number. So far we have operated well with Roger, our Haitian. Carol our experienced helper, Grant our student that I am trying to talk into a career in pharmacy, and Gary, our newbie pharmacist. Four is good so I sit back and turn more and more over to Gary. My wife tells me I should come home tomorrow. My pharmacy team is doing excellent work.

The last patients today were a family of 9 children and two adults. Sara urged family planning and passed out Trojans to Dad. Four of the children are sponsored so if you have any interest we have 5 more to go, This family lives in Cap Rouge which is a mountain village that is 8 hours walk from our clinic and 4 hours walk if you try to drive a car in that direction it. They were here last year. They live, and I am not joking, under a tree up on that mountain.

I will close this as it is past time for a shower and dinner. My face is still looking very bad from the razor nicks I made when I shaved so I just may have to live with the scruffy look till I get back home. Even I think I look terrible and I have been hiding whenever a camera is in sight.
Thank you to all who are sending the comments. I promise to publish them. Speaking of that, I have posted some of Lisa’s pictures at:http://picasaweb.google.com/edmonroe316/LisaSHaiti2008 However, you may need to make a Google account to view them. I have to put some captions under them so you will know who and what you are looking at. I HOPE to do that yet tonight.

Attention Lynn Garber & Chris Monroe: I am too lazy to proof read this so I expect that you will do it for me.
It is time for this guy to jump in the shower, eat dinner, sit through the meeting, hook up the strong fan, and maybe get some sleep. I need to wish a belated Happy Birthday to Sharon Doran. Sorry I forgot to send a card.
Love from Haiti.
Ed

Thursday morning July 17

2008-07-17T08:40:00.001-05:00

Wednesday Afternoon July 16 4 PM

I’ll start this now and work on it off and on until tomorrow morning. Not much to tell about since noon. Air conditioner is on and blowing a cool breeze on me here on the third floor. It feels nice. I have just showered and shaved with a disposable razor and managed to get 3 good nicks in my face. I am still trying to get them to stop bleeding. I never have figured out how that happens. Most of the team went to the beach. We finished about 4 PM and the last patients wanted shoes, clothes and food. Also at the end was a very small baby with AIDS. The baby was from Cap Rouge which means hat someone walked here for 8 hours for the baby to be seen by us. We did all that we were able to do. Mary Therese probably had a hard time letting the child out of her arms. I hear we are walking up to Son Son’s bar at 5:30 for some fried okra.
Grant is doing a wonderful job in the pharmacy and Carol is doing her usual excellent job. I continue to turn more and more over to Gary. I teased him that I might come home this weekend so he can experience the task on his own. As far as I can tell he is really enjoying the work and he does get along with team, interpreters and the Haitian people. He tries a few words of Kreole.
Okay, so it is now 8:30 AM the next day and I did not make it back to my laptop last night after all. After Son Son’s we came back and had dinner and our meeting and I just stayed on the second level and visited with the team instead of hiding behind my laptop.
That allowed me to get some information to pas along to my readers.
First of all, Kelli & Lisa deny all knowledge of Rickster. NOT! Thanks to Rickster for the message- it was fun delivering it. Note to my daughter Becky and her daughters, Molly & Cori: When are you planning to com on a mission asks Lisa. Note to Reeser family: All is well with Mom and Dad in Haiti-How are you behaving?
Note to Liz and Renee: Amanda is behaving. I think. Our main computer is running slow. I discovered that there were 61 windows open on the main last night so I am here cleaning up the mess that we have acquired from so many people using the system. I also rebooted the surfboard for the internet as it had lost it’s connection to all of the wireless laptops. The internet is now working much better for all. Now if I can get the main computer cleaned up, everyone will be happy. I have had several interruptions so I will post this before I have to go back downstairs.

Wednesday July 16 noon

2008-07-16T12:31:00.002-05:00

I am sitting in front of a fan to cool off after a quick lunch. Jamie had to treat an abscess on a small girl's leg this morning and the girl screamed for 1 1/2 hrs. I stayed behind at lunch time to fill her order and send her on her way. Message to Bob Hoy, Jean Fredrique got his package-what ever that means.
Thanks to Nancy and Lynn for the comments. Lynn, hope all is well in Washington State. One of our team members now lives in Seattle but I do not know what hospital she will be working at. She is the person that encouraged Liz & Renee to join us in March-April.
Nancy, I'll pray for CJ to make it into that school. I had wondered if he would be able to apply at this late date. I never did hear the name of the school in Simi Valley.
More after clinic-time to get back to work.

Tuesday July 15

2008-07-15T17:52:00.001-05:00

Tuesday after clinic

Hello from warm and sultry Haiti. I can’t believe how much I have sweat today and how many bottle of water I have consumed and how few times I have voided the water. Needless to say, I am dripping and I have been all day. I am sitting in line for the shower so I’ll pause this when it is my turn.

I do not have today’s total but we finished at 4 PM. That surprised us. It is great to have Carol, Grant and Roger to fill the orders and Gary and I to try to field the questions and do the problem solving. This team packed loads of pill yesterday and things went really smooth today. No major problems for our first day and lots of eye opening experiences for the first timers. Our lady that is frequently seen due to her breast cancer is not doing well and is in terrible pain. There is not much we can do for her but try to ease the pain. Her blood pressure is elevated as is her blood glucose level, probably due to the stress. Unfortunately she came to the pharmacy and there were questions on her dossier and she ended up sitting at the front of the pharmacy bench for over 1 hour while we tried to help her. Finally we filled her order and sent her on her way.

There were many other cases that I’ll learn more about at the team meeting tonight, but right now, I am off to the showers. AHHH! That shower felt good and I am now on the third floor outside the computer area in a cool sea breeze and life is good. Ten people remain at the clinic while the rest are at the beach. I am pleased that they are able to relax. There has been little progress on the property immediately west of the clinic. When I was here in March-April there was a man breaking rocks and throwing them into a dump truck from dawn till dusk. He must have quickly after I left as I do not see much change from then in the landscape. The rocks are sold for building materials. Yes, the goats are still on the east side and the stupid rooster’s clock is still messed up. He crows about 2:30 or 3 every morning. We’ve been awakened by the dog only once so far. That is just part of the Haitian experience. Speaking of that the dark clouds are moving in and the wind has picked up so the waves are really crashing into the rocks. Maybe there is a rain storm scheduled for tonight. There is a full moon on Friday night.

Okay, I just got deserted. Sue, Sara and Lisa joined me here but the breeze is reported to be better on the other side, so off they went. I can concentrate on this a little better that way. Ha! I am still pleased to report how ell this team has come together and worked as if they were all seasoned veterans. That is always a concern but I have never been let down yet. BTW, there remains a rumor that razors are in the lab but I can testify that they are not there. I’m getting a little scruffier as each day goes by. I do not have Bill Edwards here to join me in the ranks of the unshaven.

Saturday we will have a ½ clinic day and then some will be off to Jacmel for shopping and art. We will meet at Ambians for dinner and drinks afterwards. The prices at Ambians are up about 10 % over what they were in March-April. On Sunday, after our prayer service and breakfast, we will be off to Ti Moulage for a day at the beach and our Sunday meal. The food, this year and every mission, is great. Today was the rice, cabbage and vegetables for lunch. Last night was the tuna and noodles. Barb has baked some bread and cookies for us. The beer is good and cold and I do have a stash of Sauvignon Blanc in the pharmacy refrigerator. Swimmers are back and the noise level has risen. They are all competing for the showers before dinner. I have rattled on long enough so I’ll post this. I still hope to hear from you.

Monday afternoon July 14

2008-07-14T17:26:00.002-05:00

Hello from Haiti at early evening. I have just has a nice shower and feel much better. Prestige (local beer) in hand, I’ll write a few lines before dinner. We were all up early this morning and breakfast was at 7. Every one pitched in and unloaded the bags. One exploded package of oatmeal and a few crushed vitamin bottles was all the damage we found. That is almost as unbelievable as our making all of our connections to Haiti. After unpacking, we began to pack pill for tomorrow and every one pitched in until about 2:30 PM when it was beach time. We managed to get almost every thing packaged for the first few days of clinic and I am most grateful that all of my team members helped out. We should be in great shape for tomorrow. The weather is warm and humid. Even though it is only 89 degrees you sweat all day and all night long. I enjoyed my sweat free half hour after my shower and am beginning to really sweat a lot now and I am no where near the sun. This morning there were about 25 people waiting outside the clinic. The 8 from yesterday are still there and I am sure there will be quite a crowd in the morning.
I am very pleased with this team. Everyone is having a great time and the conversations are very lively. I had promised to identify the July team so here it is along with their reported jobs. That does not list the laundry duty, dishes duty, and Son Son run duty that may come their way. As a matter of fact, most of the team is on a Son Son run right now.

The July team roster, along with a quick job description and a note of they are new:

Gary Alwan, Pharmacist, new

Eric Behrens, non-medical,

Sue Behrens, APN, Provider, team leader

Jamie Beversdorf, Pediatric Resident, new, Provider

Barb Hammond, non-medical, Triage/Medical Records

Dick Hammond, non-medical, FOTCOH Clinic Enforcer

Amanda Johnson, RNLP, Wound Care/lab

Jan Lundeen,RN, Provider Triage/RTC

Lisa Phillips, Physician, Provider, new

Kelly Phillips, EMT, new, Triage/pateints

Ed Monroe, Pharmacist, Pharmacy

Becky Reeser,RNLP,Triage/RTC

Jim Reeser, non-medical, new,Crowd Control-front

Chris Robinson, EMT-B, Triage/patients, new

Grant Schmidt, non-medical, Pharmacy, new

Mary-Therese Schmidt, non-medical, Triage/Medical Records, new

Bruce Steiner, non-medical, Crowd Control-Back

Carol Steiner, non-medical, Pharmacy

Dan Steiner, non-medical, Cook/lab

Sara Thomas, APN, Provider

David Thorpe, RN/APN student, Provider, new

Jon Wagner, non-medical, Crowd Control- Front

There is really not much else to report at this time and it will soon be dinner time. So I’ll close for now.

Thanks for reading this. I would love to hear from any team members families, I can be bribed for dirty details. Ha.
Ooops. I forgot to confess that I failed to bring along a safety razor and I have yet to find the 200 disposable ones that used to be here. Maybe we can have a contest to see how long I’ll go before I shave,.
Ed

Sunday after dinner 7-13

2008-07-13T20:45:00.000-05:00

We had that great first meal here that Neva and Andreta fix for us. It is around 9 PM and we are waiting for our bags to arrive by truck from Port-Au-Prince (PAP). It sounds like we have had to hire another truck as the one from Jacmel broke down somewhere on the way to the airport. That is so very Haitian. However the amazing news is that we made all of our connections and in spite of the usual problems getting our checked luggage in PAP which took over 1 ½ hours after we had cleared immigration so we were very upset at the baggage handlers at the airport. It almost caused us to miss our plane from PAP to Jacmel. We made that plane with only 5 minutes to spare or else we would have had to spend the night in PAP or try to find surface transportation to Cyvadier. We landed in the E concourse of Miami airport instead the expected D concourse but we were almost 30 minutes early so my fear of a short connection time was for naught. This team has come together and we laugh a lot so tthat is a good thing. We avoided the storm over PAP on our way to Jacmel and that was good. The generator is working, the internet is working, the Prestige is cold, and lie here is good. Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we do for you. I’m tired butt the truck is still here so I’ll jump off line and let some one else get on. More tomorrow. Ed

Sunday Juky 13 2008 1

2008-07-13T18:34:00.002-05:00

Quick note more later, we made it here in 12 hours and our bags made it to Port-Au-Prince but the truck has broken down so we may see them later tonight. It is almost time for dinner and past time for a glass of wine or a Prestige so I'll write more later. I just wanted to report that all is well. Love from Cyvadier!
Ed

July 2008

2008-07-08T20:25:00.003-05:00

Hello again dear readers. It is almost time for another trip to Haiti with the Friends Of The Children Of Haiti medical mission team. We will leave Peoria at 6:00 AM for Chicago, catch a plane for Miami, run for the plane to Port-Au-Prince, dash to the small airport in PAP for our flight to Jacmel and arrive at the clinic in about 12 hours. That is, if everything goes our way. We only have under 50 minutes to get from the plane from Chicago to the plane to PAP. Also. we are flying a smaller plane from Peoria to Chicago so I wonder f our baggage will fit on that plane. Then there is the issue of getting our bags to the PAP plane from the Chicago plane. Do I have any bettors in the crowd? Out team has 22 members, including Dick and Barb Hammond. We will travel there with 19 people. There are 18 from Central Illinois and 1 coming from the Seattle Washington area where she recently relocated to from the Chicago area. Nine of the team are new to Haiti so we have a nice mix of new and old. I am excited that there is a second pharmacist along and hope I have not scared him already. We will have two physicians and this will be their first FOTCOH mission. We'll have two brand new RN's and I am very proud of them as I have worked with them on previous teams. The wonderful Steiner family is along on this trip, Carol to help me, Dan to cook, and Bruce to tease. Ha! I'll introduce more to you on later posts. I just wanted to get this first post up and running before we leave. I is good practice for all of you to watch out for all my grammatical mistakes. Thanks again for readin this and thanks for all of your prayers and support.

Monday April 7

2008-04-07T16:09:00.000-05:00

Hello from Illinois. We finally made it back but it was quite an adventure. We arrived in Miami around 9 PM. The Air France flight was nice with a free bottle of wine with our snack. I sat next to a lady that I had spoken with earlier in the day. She was a very interesting lady, having lived for 35 years in Africa with her husband who was a contractor. She has family in the USA that includes a grandson who is attending Harvard on a full tuition scholarship and a granddaughter who is attending Columbia Univeristy Medical School on a full tuition scholarship. As we exited the plane and began a very long walk to immigration she became short of breath so I stayed with her until we reached that area. It tool well over 1 hour for us to get through the line and as I was at the rear, I did not get to say goodbye to many of my team mates who were rushing to American Airlines counter before it closed. By the time we collected our bags and crates and got to American it was already closed. Lynn Garber’s husband had rented a 12 passenger van and hauled Katie, Liz, John and myself to Fort Lauderdale and dropped us off at a Hampton Inn near the Fort Lauderdale airport. Lynn has family in Fort Lauderdale and her husband was there and that was a wonderful help. I understand that Katie & Liz ordered a pizza. John and I just crashed only to be awakened by a welcome phone call from Linda that they had arrived safely into Chicago. Returning to sleep, I was awakened by John as he thought he had lost his case carrying his passport and all of the important papers. It was located under his bags and we finally got to sleep. We awoke at 5 AM and helped open the breakfast bar at the Hampton and all of us rode the shuttle to the American terminal. It was driven by a man from Port-Au-Prince. We had little trouble getting to the departure lounge for our 8 AM flight. I managed to cut my finger at TSA security and I have yet to figure out how. Liz and Katie did not have seats and that was a worry as Liz had a wedding to go to that afternoon in Chicago. We were assured that she would be given a seat after all had been checked in and that was the truth. Our flight to Chicago was a little turbulent and the pilot was given instructions from air traffic control to use another route and we arrived earlier than expected. After quick god byes to Liz, who lives in Chicago, and John, whose wife was meeting him at the airport, Katie and I had a bite of lunch at the Chili’s restaurant and took the 12:30 PM plane to Peoria. Katie’s dad met us and hauled me and 3 crates to my car in the far end of the parking lot. I was home a little after 2 PM and very glad to get here. I did take a nap around 6:30 PM and went to bed at 8 PM. I awoke around 6:30 AM and we managed to take in 7:30 AM Mass and had a quiet breakfast. We worked outside in the yard and attended the 2 PM picture part for the February team. It was a great reunion and the pictures brought back memories. We left a little after 4 PM as I was getting sleepy so I took another long nap and again headed for bed at 8:00 PM. This morning I feel a bit more rested but did doze off this afternoon when I sat down on my son’s couch. He is stuck at home recovering from his Achilles tendon surgery so we went over to help him clean his house for an upcoming birthday party of his oldest daughter. Donna explained to me that she had use some wart removing pads and the foot doctor told her she removed the entire wart on the bottom of her foot. She is still frustrated about the hour long wait. So all that remains is to send you some pictures and that may take a week or so as Katie is assembling them onto a CD.
I want to close this portion by saying how very proud I was to be a part of this tremendous team. Your work ethic was inspirational. The cooperation between all of you was outstanding and meant a lot to me. I loved working with you and hope I can do it again sometime. If there is ever any way that I can be of help, encouragement, prayer, or just to be a listened I am always available.

Friday April 4

2008-04-05T04:11:00.000-05:00

Friday April 4, 2008

Hello from Haiti. I am starting this at the departure lounge of Air France and it is about the time we were to be flying out of Fort Lauderdale to Chicago on our way home. Today has not been a good travel day so far. It started around 5:15 AM when I awoke to the first light streaming in my window and my good buddy, Sparkey the rooster, calling out the breaking of dawn. I went out and started the coffee and then traveled up to the third floor to put away my computer. It was after 10:30 PM when I finally got to bed. I had left the computer hooked up as it was used by several of the team to email and check on things while we were at the clinic. Around 6:45 AM we assembled and boarded Son Son’s tap tap and Dick’s truck for the trip to Jacmel airport. Our plane was to be in at 8:00 AM. We had chartered a special Tortug Air flight and there was only 1 seat unfilled for our return trip. Here is where the problems started. The Tortug plane arrived at 8:15 AM and there was no Tortug employee to check and load the baggage or to check us in. Fortunately the pilot and co-pilot did the check in and the employees of another airline did the bags. We had a nice flight to Port-Au-Prince (PAP) at the airport for the local planes. We got our bags and took 3 vehicles to the main airport. There was a larger than normal crowd at the airport entrance and we should have suspected problems. Boyer did not have his passport and was not allowed to enter into the airport with us so we waved good bye. He had some business in PAP and was returning by bus to Jacmel. After we were in an long line for over an hour we found out that our 11:00 AM American Airlines flight had been canceled. We managed to get some one at American to rebook most of us on the 6:00 PM flight on Air France that we are presently waiting for in this lounge. It is 4:30 PM as I type this but it is quiet and comfortable so the time will pass quickly, I hope. Linda and Renee managed to get booked on the American flight at around 4 PM and well be back in Chicago yet this evening. It is just pulling out now and is late. Some of the team’s cell phones worked so we first called Dick to alert him to the problem then we began to text message family and friends in the USA for assistance. Some cell phones worked and some did not. American did give us food vouchers so we had the famous PAP hot dog, the 16 oz soda and, after a very long wait, some pomme fries (French fries). I got a message to my son and I hope he was able to reach my wife. I will be sure to call her from the USA. At Miami we will likely split up as some of the team will stay in the area for a couple of days, Diana heads off for Nashville and the rest of us will head to Fort Lauderdale for an 8 AM flight to Chicago. Katie and I will then get a 1:30 PM flight to Peoria, or at least I hope so. There appears to be three other groups of American missionaries on this flight and they were booked on the American flight that was canceled. One team was doing a construction project and I am not sure what the other team was doing. We are trying text message to get American’s phone number so they will pay for our hotel in the US tonight. Every one is tired. All of this waiting around drags a person’s spirit down. The team has shopped the gift shop and is mentally ready to be home. I am typing this on my laptop in Microsoft Word so I can publish it later when I get an internet connection. A funny thing about this airport, there are no landing lights here so we have to leave before dark or not leave at all. Papa Dick had made arrangements at the Wall’s Guest House in case we would have had to spend tonight in PAP. He was relieved that we would be getting out of Haiti tonight. Our leader and I agree that FOTCOH needs to purchase a Digicel phone for use here in Haiti so we can get better communications while we are here. We were so lucky that two of the 14 team member’s cell phones would work. Quick aside, one of the construction team members came over and gave Diana an Eastern Kentucky University hat. That is where Diana has applied for entrance into their nursing program. It is a small world, indeed.
Back to our flight fun, we hope to get to Miami by 9:30 and clear customs by 10:30 PM. Then we will decide if we go straight to the Fort Lauderdale airport and how we will do that. Liz wants to get a hotel room as she has a wedding to attend tomorrow in Chicago. At this point we have yet to decide whether to get a room or just cap out at the airport. It will be a short night in any event. The Air France plane has landed and I will save this for later.
It is 5 AM on Saturday and I am sending this from s hotel on Fort Lauderdale, FL. Details to follow soon.

Thursday night April 3

2008-04-03T21:27:00.002-05:00

I am ready to come home. I am packed and we have had our last team meeting, I had a great bunch of people to work with and my inventory went smoothly and they even helped me to clean the pharmacy and pack up everything for the May team. I will be bring two totes home as we found an empty one late this evening so I repacked my stuff into two totes rather than one. Katie will be riding with me to Peoria so I will have some help in case I cannot find my car at the airport. I am playing Elvis off of my computer in the background for Renee, our Elvis fan. And I have just returned from escorting Liz to the spooky pharmacy to get a gallon zip lock bag for all of her treasures. No, I did not get a manicure. The manicurist took almost 1 hour on each of the 5 girls and it was dinner time by the time it was my turn, I know my family would have been shocked if I would have come home with nail polish. Ha! We did reach the 1900 patient level and I could not be prouder of the members of this team. We came together from Washington, Minnesota, Kentucky, and Illinois as strangers and leave enriched by the friendship and camaraderie we have gained by this experience. Yes, we may never again be on the same FOTCOH team but we will always treasure our time together. I thanked them for putting up with me. Those who know me will truly understand that remark. I took time to clean up Dick’s desktop and laptop computer of a bunch of junk that has been growing on his computers. I also downloaded a program that I want him to run after each mission to clean up the websites that attack his system when we use it for email etc while we are here.
I was done with the inventory around 4:30 PM but I did not get to the beach or to Son Son’s but I did not mind. I did compliment Dr Nelson as this was the best job I have ever seen home do for FOTCOH and I was very impressed that he now has gotten used to FOTCOH and has read and will follow our protocols. I am sure the FOTCOH Medical advisory board will appreciate that fact. I also complimented my 3 pill packers and 3 interpreters. I had the least problems with them than on any of the 7 previous missions.
Boyer’s brother Jacky, who is also Andrita’s brother, did an outstanding job on this mission and I was very proud of him I can’t wait to tell his sponsor, Carolyn, how well he did on this mission. It is a hot muggy night and I hope I can sleep better than the past few nights. I do thank the Lord for giving me a pain free two weeks as I worried each day that the back pain would return and He blessed me with His peace. Diana had a beautiful prayer to close our team meeting and Dick said the Grace and brought a few tears to my eyes. I know that I will be back in July and I am anxious to get home and be with my family and friends. Tomorrow we will be at the airport in Jacmel at 7 AM for an 8AM flight and I will be back in Peoria by 10:00 PM if all goes well. This is wild, as I type this I am carrying on an online conversation with my friend, Stella Marie, who is at her desk in Malaysia. The wonders of the internet boggle the mind. It is wonderful to hear from this very spiritual lady. I pray for the day that I can see her again. I met her in Cologne in 2005 at World Youth Days and we became very close friends along with David who was traveling with her. They took such great care on Grandpa Ed. Time for bed for this old man. I hate to stop viviting with Stella Marie. I said good night and she remineded me that It is aleady tomorrow morning over there. OOPS. No matter it was wonderful to hear from her. I'll try to sign on in the morning before we leave for the airport. Otherwise it will be sometime Saturday before I will be back on line. Thanks again for reading this blog.

Thursday April 3, 2008

2008-04-03T06:12:00.001-05:00

The sky is becoming lighter with the rising sun so I finally gave up trying to sleep and here I am at the computer. Papa Dick told me hat I spend a lot of time on the computer and my family would attest to that fact. It seemed like the dog and the rooster were having a contest overnight as to which one could make the most noise, Yes home and my own bed will feel very good in about a day and a half. I go on these missions and really begin to miss home during the last few days. I will not get back to Peoria until after 10:00 PM on Friday night-if all goes well with my travel. On the February mission, we managed to get to O’Hare airport in Chicago to catch that last plane to Peoria only to find out there was no first officer so the plane could not be flown. We had to run to catch the Peoria Charter bus and got home around 1:30 AM but we did get home.

Our last clinic day here will be a busy one. We will see patients in the morning, have our lunch, and then take inventory, clean up, and out the clinic to bed until the May team arrives. It was funny to see an email about their upcoming packing party date, time, and place, in my inbox the other day. This coming Sunday, I will be attending the picture party for the January team that I was a part of. That team is made up primarily of people from the Peoria, Illinois area so we get together and exchange photo CD’s and printed pictures and catch up with each other, since this March team is so spread out over the country, Katie has volunteered to assemble all of the digital pictures on a CD for the team. I am not sure how we will see the pictures from the disposable cameras that I have seen.

Papa Dick has just turned on the generator so we will have the electricity for the coffee making and the Internet. EDH power was off at 1:30 AM when I checked. I was supposed to be on until 3 AM. I am told, but I have no faith that this will happen, that EDH will provide electricity 24 hours a day starting on April 14. Diesel fuel for the generator costs over $ 7,00 USD per gallon here. No, I do not know how many hours per gallon the generator gets but I will try to find out. The goat chorus has begun as the small children take them out to the rocks to graze for the day. Somehow, one of them got into the compound yesterday so I told Diana, the veterinary tech, that it needed attention as she has been complaining about not being able to handle small animals. I had so much fun with that remark, I went on to tell John, our leader, that he was now not the only old goat on the property. Yes, I’ll do anything for a laugh!

Wow, I just went on line to check my email and I heard from all of my littlest grandchildren last night. That was a great and pleasant surprise. They had questions about Haiti, questions about my work, questions about different animals that might be on the island, questions about my behavior on April fool’s day, and some love messages that made a tear or two in my eye. As I said earlier today, I really start to miss home about this time every mission.

The Scrabble game went until after 10 last night and it is fun to hear the laughter and joy that a board game brings to people. I just drifted off to sleep and all was dark and quiet a little later in the evening so all must have made it to their beds. Holly just went by and asked if I had said anything mean about her on my blog. I told her that as far as I knew I had told everyone that she had done drugs with me here in Haiti as she has helped us out in the pharmacy when she was done seeing patients. That ought to shock her 17 year old daughter some, and he husband as well. Liz just breezed. She told me yesterday that her sister was broadcasting the things I have said about Liz to all of her friends. Fortunately, I have only divulged half of it. She and I have a “thing” going on in the morning after her shower. I will not say anymore about that but leave it to you to imagine. Ha! Liz is at the desktop computer and Lynn is on the other laptop so the computer center is back up and running. Liz and Renee asked me yesterday if I knew of any single men so here is your chance, you single guys, to meet two beautiful, charming, cheerful, dedicated nurses. Just let me know and I will be happy to make the introductions. Somehow, I feel like I am digging myself into a hole with them but no matter. They have probably gotten used to me by now. I have spent some time with Mo discussing various things. She teaches, runs a nursing agency, has a charter boat, owns some condos, loves to do the book keeping each day, and is just a pleasure to be with. I can say the same for the whole rest of the team. I thank them daily for all of the help that they give me, all of the smiles that I get from them and for their wonderful work here in Haiti.

I’ll close on that note and head for the breakfast table. Thanks for reading this.

Wednesday night 9 PM

2008-04-02T21:00:00.002-05:00

Hello. This will be a short note after a long day. We saw 258 patients today even with Jeremy gone and David under the weather with tummy problems. He is much better now so please do not get alarmed. Today's total brings us to 1797 patients so far so I suspect we will reach 1900 after tomorrow. I had projected 1500 and John1200. Dick will be right after all. Darn I hate when that happens. Today went very well and we cleaned off the benches so that no one who needed to be seen was left outside and we even saw a few who really did not need medical attention. They wanted what ever they could get free from us-shoes, clothes, tylenol, etc.
A request for a prayer as my wife is getting some foot surgery tomorrow. Thanks. She had her cataract surgery when I was here in February and it just seem to work out that way. I wonder what will happen when I come back in July. Before and after supper I helped Dick make his first Ebay purchase. We tried to bid on two items and lost the bid at the last second. We finally were able to get what he wanted and he will have it shipped to my home and then shipped to him when he is in Florida later this month.
I saw a pelican today. That is the first one in the 8 missions that I have been here. It so reminded me of my place in Florida. The Scrabble game is going on but I will try to go to sleep in spite of that. I had a rough night with David's unrest so I am tired. More tomorrow!!

Wednesday April 2 early morning

2008-04-02T06:28:00.000-05:00

It is 5 AM and here I am typing in the dark again. Our EDH power goes off at 3 AM and we will switch over to the generator when Dick wakes up. So I am sitting here, with the aid of my flashlight and the laptop screen and blogging again. This will be a lot of rambling thoughts that I made some notes on last night. After I signed off last night I made a trip up on the roof for a few minutes of star gazing. It is one of my favorite past times while I am here. There is very little ambient light and the stars glisten in the night. One is able to see the entire sky. As I type, Jeremy is preparing to leave for Port-Au-Prince. He is ready to go home. He has been a great friend, a wonderful caring doctor, a patient teacher, and we have had a good time. Thanks again to Lori F for sharing you man with us. I will miss him
Every morning, as soon as the sun comes up, one can hear sounds from the property to the West of the clinic. The sounds are being made by 1 or 2 men as the try to break up the rocks with a sledge hammer and throw the rocks into the bed of a dump truck. This goes on until almost dark. I am told that the property is being cleared for a resort, at the current rate of rock breaking and the rocky nature of the land it will be many years before the resort is a reality.
I was told by Lynn yesterday that I need to do a better job of proof reading before I post to the blog. I told her that I had heard that request time and again and the advice never seems to sink in. I’ve been thinking about buying a voice recognition software program. I have always been a two fingered typist and it takes quite a bit of time to put the words on the page. I wonder if that is available at Overstock dot com.
Another first on this mission was the arrival of a drug rep. Two men drove up with a van filled with boxes; Dr Nelson had invited them to visit. Papa Dick and I spent about 45 minutes and I will be bringing back samples of their wares for the pharmacy committee to evaluate. I will also be bringing back their current price list so that I can convert it into USD. We did purchase all of the cough syrup that they had on their truck as we had just run out of our supply and every patient we seem to see yesterday had a cough. I ended up splitting the 4 oz bottle into some of the empty bottles that I had left from previous missions. Mark will need to purchase more 2 oz dropper bottles, 2 oz amber grads, and 4 oz amber grads for the May team. We have used the bottles to send home a variety of medications. One of the most interesting is the suspension of Griseofulvin that we must prepare for the children. We only have 500 mg tablets available so we calculate the child’s weight in kilograms, multiply it by the dose per kg, multiply that by a 30 day supply. Then we have the total number of milligrams required. That number is divided by 500 and we have the number of tablets that we now must grind up in a mortar with a pestle for our mixture. Next we add water to make the suspension and dispense it in the dropper bottle with a dropper that puts out a 1 ml dose. Why, you ask, don’t we purchase it already made? The answer is the cost is prohibitive. On previous teams we were able to purchase some short dated bottles at a great price but I have not seen that since.
On every mission we constantly hear the complaint that our patient has run out of medicine and we discovered a new reason yesterday. Several patients have complained that they were told to take the medicine twice a day by the interpreters in the pharmacy when the order was written for once a day. The great folks a triage brought me a sample early yesterday morning and I was easily able to see how that could happen. There was a comic strap that I have not seen for sometime. The character was named POGO and he often would say “We have met the enemy and it is us.” Yes, our poor handwriting and abbreviation shortcuts got us into problems again. One of the physicians, and I will not name names here, had written for the drug to be given 1 q day however the q looked very much like a two so either we could have written for two doses per day on the bag or, more likely, our interpreter, who reads the orders off of the dossier and not off of the bag of medications, could have told the patient to take it twice. This issue will have to go to the pharmacy committee and the medical advisory committees for discussion. I will be bringing back a copy of the order. I will also be bringing back some of the concerns of this team that they want to address to the medical advisory committee. That will be a longer meeting that the normally long ones that I have attended in the past.
More random thoughts: The suppliers that made the visit had medications from a company in the Dominican Republic so the labels were in Spanish. They did have some horse Viagra available but I told them we did nit have a protocol for that medication. By the way, we did have several requests for Reglan and I am sorry that I did not think to order it.
I may have already told you in a previous blog that I heard from my friend in Malaysia since I have been here. She manages to catch me on line via MSN Messenger. It blows mind that one can talk with someone on the other side of the world from a computer in a third world county.
I seem to have inspired another blog. You can find it at www.xanga.com/sunandsea. I have enjoyed teasing Davis with it and now my son has written to the author and that caused a red face on David again. Ha! Speaking of my son tonight is his night with the kids so I hope to be on line sometime when they are also on line. Also a note to Liz’s sister: thanks for the ammunition. I had a blast with her once I found out her age. Keep up the good work.
For my readers from previous teams, this is my scruffy period when I do not tae time to shave but home is coming soon so it is off with the scruffy today, sometime or another.
Another important fact is that beet potato salad is great but it goes in red and exits at the same color. Nuff said there.
We will run out of Ivermectin today. I want to refer you to Diana’s blog (www.xanga.com/aniaDiana) to read the song that I first hear from Dt. Bill about Ivermectin. We have exceeded the 1200 patient level that was predicted so now we will do the best that we can. We are also out of stool softeners and I’d recommend that we order a larger supply.
Time for breakfast and then to work so I’ll try to get this posted. Weather is cooler today but the sun is out so that will not last long. Please keep those comments coming.

Late Tuesday evening

2008-04-01T20:33:00.002-05:00

Today was a much better day for me in terms of my mood. I have heard from some of my family about health issues at home and problems at home that have been solved or are in the process of being solved. Many of the team is off to the beach now and it will be a little quieter for awhile. Tonight’s dinner will be with beet potato salad and I am a most happy fellow. I always enjoy the beet potato salad and we now make it at home in the states.
Lots of crazy things happened today and I do not know where I should start. Ha, I started this at 5PM and it is now 8: 07 PM and the team meeting is over. I have lots of information for the medical advisory board of FOTCOH. Oh crap, it is now almost 9 PM. We have been talking here at the computer stations and I have not gotten very far with. On top of that my friend from Malaysia has been on MSN Messenger and we have been talking together. It is not that I mean to neglect my blog readers but I am having problems juggling all of the balls I have in the air at this time do I will post this tonight and continue in the morning when it is quiet. Jeremy is off to the airport at 6 so I know I will be awake long before that. I apologize to those who were waiting for some delicious gossip.

Early Tuesday April 1

2008-04-01T06:13:00.000-05:00

Good morning. Happy April Fool’s Day! I am reading a new book called “A New Earth” and the chapter I am on discusses ways we gain attention. So today, I will try to pass up the temptation to pull some April Fools jokes on my team mates and do just a little less teasing. The author is trying to get me to let go of my ego and to find my inner Presence. So far, I am enjoying what I have read. My thanks go to Oprah for her recommendation.
The power is back on, using our CAT generator, so I’ll go and make the coffee and come back in a moment. Due to the power fluctuations, I write this in Word and paste it to the blog when I am able to get out on the internet. Ahh, I do enjoy the Haitian bleu coffee here. I slept well after I got to sleep. I quit trying to post pictures around 8 PM and showered. There was a Scrabble game going on in the kitchen so it did not quiet down until the game was over. That gave me time to reflect on the day, say some prayers for the deceased man, for this team, for my family, and for myself. That is a good thing.
A note to Mike: Thanks for the comment on my blog. I had some fun with Renee by telling her it was from a fellow by the name of Dave and she could not figure out who Dave was until she read the comment. I appreciate also your kind words. Also this is a note to Lori Ann, our David’s friend, who was inspired by my blog to create her own blog on the Xanga site. If you want to find the web address, you will need to reach Lori Ann’s comment on my blog. Also a thank you to Victoria, Lori Ann’s daughter for helping this team have so many reading glasses to pass along to the Haitian people. My translator, Belanay, or Oh Baloney as we call to him-Thanks to Sharon D of the January team, just loves to fit people with the glasses. Yes, we have run out of shoes for everyone. We are also, as mentioned previously, out of baby bottles and formula. I alo want to say Thanks to my team mates fan clubs as the reports of my blog are brought to me almost as soon as you send them. It makes the time that I take to write this much more enjoyable when I know that people read it and appreciate it. Today we will be taking our team picture as Jeremy is leaving the team early so he can get to San Antonio and close on the new house that Loti and Jeremy have purchased there in Texas. Note to Lori: Thanks again for sharing Jeremy for this mission. You know that I love to work with the both of you and miss you two in Peoria.
I do want to comment on the weather on this mission. In spite of the rain, this is the most favorable temperatures that I have encountered on the 7 previous missions that I have been on. This past January was hot and sticky and I suspect the upcoming July mission that I will be on next will be hot and muggy as it was last year. By the way, for those new to FOTCOH, we now hold 6 missions (one every other month) to Haiti. You can find more information at www.FOTCOH.org if you are ever interested in going on a mission, have someone who would like to go on a mission, or have some extra money to donate to our mission work. We are not a religion based group and so we depend on friends, relatives, and some corporate donations for our existence. The costs to run this organization, hold our clinics, order medications and supplies, run the sponsor child program, and all of the other details runs over $500,000.00 per year. Our fund raising efforts are huge and, I am told by the board of directors, we are seriously in need of cash in order to pay a large bill for medications for the next two clinics. We purchase the bulk of our medications from MAP International (www.MAP.org). Among their duties is supplying medications to missionaries like FOTCOH at some very low prices. They too, raise money from donations and we sometimes get extra help with our shipping costs as well as our drug costs from MAP. There is a main office in Holland and we work closely with the wonderful people of MAP in Georgia. So you get to hear my soapbox speech today but I have developed a strong passion for the work that FOTCOH does here in Haiti and a special love for Dick and Barb, the founders. It sounds like every one is up and rolling along. NO reports of mosquito attacks so the coils must be working. I’ll close this and try to post.

Monday bedtime

2008-03-31T19:58:00.002-05:00

I have been trying to post more Ambians photos and they take 20 minutes to download so I'll call it quits for tonight and get some much needed sleep. I did share my M & M Peanuts tonight and they were a big hit. We had enchilada's tonight for supper. Larry S, I am not missing you cooking too much. We saw 229 patients today as we cut off early. The entire clinic is in mourning for our deceased man. It really affected the team, our Haitian workers, and many of the patients. There were several bad cases today and one fammily is in need of a sponsor if any of my readres would care to sponsor this 6 month old, failure to thrive baby whom we sent to the Cuban pediatrician at the San Michel hospital. The cost is $ 300.00 per year or $ 25.00 per month. Just let me know and I will take care of it from this end.
PS, I need some ideas for some good April Fools jokes on my team mats so send in those comments, please.

AmbiansPhotos 2

2008-03-31T19:45:00.001-05:00

Ambians Photos 1

2008-03-31T17:23:00.001-05:00

Early Monday evening

2008-03-31T17:17:00.000-05:00

Wow, the internet is still working and it looks like rain. I’ll try to rush. I did get Dick’s main computer back working again. There was a problem with the anti virus and I figured out where the conflict was and I was able to resolve it. Yeah for me-Ha! My day started very early as John had a rough overnight with his sore foot. I gave him some tramadol and it made him nauseated but he is much better now, Next, Renel, one of our outside helpers and a young man that always has a smile for me, came to me to fill some orders. I understood most of them but I had questions abot the third. Renel’s English is fair so I asked him where the patient was so I could question the person as to what we were treating. We began to walk out of the compound and Dick stopeed us to ask what was going on. It turned out that the order was for Renel’s mother-in law and he was taking me up to his home on the hill ( about a mile away) to ask her. I am very glad that Dick caught us. Later in the day, we showed the order to Dr Nelson and, as I had suspected, it was an order from Dr. Bertrand for blood work. About 8:30 our ambulance driver (he carries patients in his wheelbarrow and makes a sound like an ambulance) came screaming by the pharmacy. Long story short, he brought in a man who died about 9:30 of acute liver failure and we were almost helpless to comfort him. That set a pall over everyone and every Haitian employee and every team member had to pay their respects. I asked Diana to pray for him and I lost my composure as I am a big softy. Next, Mark P, our pharmacist on the upcoming May mission had emailed me to look for some of his notebooks so I did a little-very little-cleaning and discovered a document that someone had left and I wish I had found it earlier. I have to find the author of the Auto-Sub list. For those in Renee’s fan club you will have to ask her how I cured her leg cramps. No, I did NOT get to massage them-darn! She tells me that her fan club is very curious about some of the remarks that I have made about her. Please be advised that I can be bribed with a financials contribution to FOTCOH in her name. I will alert the FOTCOH treasurer to watch for the flood of mailed in money. We have begun to run out of some medications and are hoarding others. That makes my job more difficult to switch meds to solve the same problem-IF I am able to find a substitute. We did use the last of the infant formula so any who truly wants to do a good deed, please help FOTCOH with baby formula donations and baby bottle donations. We never seem to have enough. My thanks to Carol Miller, APN of the September team for all that we have had for this mission. The Cubs are on TV in the lounge, my wine is tasty, and I want to try to post this and some pictures so I’ll try again later. Thanks to my family for the emails today-they carried me a long way when I was in tears. Well, the internet went out again and so this will go later. I have also found out that we will have a manicurist here for our last day so we can look “pretty” for our trip home. I wonder if I will have time for one.
Wow, the internet is back. THANK YOU to my readers for the comments. I love them!! They inspire me greatly.

Monday noon time 2

2008-03-31T12:35:00.002-05:00

I was able to get two blogs posted and MAYBE I'll get to send some pictures at the end of clinic today. Thanks for all your prayers.

Monday March 31

2008-03-31T12:34:00.000-05:00

It is 5:15 AM and I am up. Our unfriendly neighborhood rooster decided at 5 AM that it was time to announce the day to the world. I did not sleep very soundly last night. I went to bed at 8:30 PM and that is not a typographical error. I awoke at 11 PM and decided to try to post to the internet. Renee was still awake and on the laptop and had made a connection. I was not so lucky. Liz, her room mate was still awake and reading. I tried for an hour to get out but with no success, even on the main computer. A little while later, I light a mosquito coil for the girls in the other upstairs bedroom as they were getting bitten as they slept. Morning is coming as I hear Diedudone whistling outside the clinic. He rides his bike from Jacmel to the clinic and is always the first to arrive. Back to my night, when I returned to bed I laid awake for a long time. Some time later, I heard John awake and got up to help him. He managed to twist his ankle yesterday and it is painful. David, my other room mate was also up several times overnight.
The weather today is stormy. There was thunder and lightning all night long and a great downpour is occurring outside. At some point overnight the electricity from EDH stopped and my fan no longer gave me comfort. When Papa Dick awakens he will turn on the generator. We have been giving it an extreme workout and it is wearing out. We could sure use about $ 30,000.00 USD to purchase a new one. The breeze from this storm is cool and coming from the south. I am sitting on the third floor near the computers and enjoying the cool breeze and it is really raining hard. As I type this, I am praying for our patients who are outside the compound waiting to be seen. They must be huddled under the tarp that we have placed there as a temporary shelter. I am sure they are wet and cold and maybe a little scared. With all of this thunder and lightening I wonder how we will hold a clinic today. If we do manage to hold one we will track lots of mud and sand on to the slick tile floor and have an accident waiting to happen. Barb just woke up and passed by. The sky is getting lighter in the south and east so maybe the rain will stop, the sun will come out, and the internet will up and running. Papa Dick is awake and soon I’ll hear the generator running. Jeremy, who sleeps on the third floor balcony and not on the roof, must have been awakened by the rain that had to be blowing on him.
I failed to mention, yesterday, that Diana attended a Haitian church service at the time we were having our prayer service. She hated to miss our group and had stayed up till 11:30 PM the night before and written a note to each team member and placed them on a kitchen table in the form of a cross. She shared later that she sat with Suzette, one of our Haitian pill packers and they shared a song book. Diana was invited to sing a solo and I imagine, with her beautiful voice, that it was very moving. Diana reminds me so much of my young friends in Peoria who are involved in the Teens Encounter Christ program that I have worked with over the past several years.I hope Dick gets the power on soon so I can make the coffee. Ha! Diesel fuel for the generator costs over $ 5.00 per gallon here. I am sorry that I cannot report how many gallons per hour that the generator consumes but I know this is exceeding our budget. Ah, we have lights and I hear the sound so I am off to make the coffee

After the beach

2008-03-31T12:31:00.000-05:00

The internet is down and it was too slow earlier to download all of the pictures than I wanted to send. Sorry about that. The Kansas game is going on and we have an alumnus, Dave, on our team. It is now sunset so I’ll pause and check out the sunset over the mountains and under the clouds. It was beautiful and I even saw the green flash that I do not see in Florida. Thank you, Lord,
It rained and poured at the beach and we sat under the patio of the partially finished “resort” for quite awhile. The usual vendors appeared and it was quite crowded but the girls enjoyed the shopping. The veterans will understand that we had problems with the pushy Tee shirt lady. Franz, our interpreter, Papa Dick, and the manager of the building all tried to shoo her away and she kept putting her wares deeper into the building to protect them from the downpour/ Finally, Dick banned her from the place and no one purchased a tee shirt from her. Wow, the game in the background is getting noisier. It is hard to think, let alone type when the crowd is screaming loudly. After the rain, we got out on the beach and into the water. We also walked the beach and Renee and Liz were treated to a strip show by a two year old boy and his slightly older brother. They played on the beach as we walked along and really wanted the attention. Yes, we have pictures that I’ll try to load later but they may get censored. I showed Renee, Liz, Holly and David the beach house where clinic was held a few years ago. We walked up to the fishing boats on the west end of the beach and past the partially constructed building, I do not know if it is a house, restaurant, or what ever. In any event there has been quite a bit of progress on it since my February visit and all of the partial concrete that exposed the empty cement bags that had been thrown into the cement and built into the building were covered up and the concrete smoothed over. This is the building that used empty 55 gallon plastic barrels for concrete column molds and they are set at an irregular fashion.
The band that we enjoyed last July was playing in the east side restaurant and came to entertain us once again. Our meal of fish (said to be snapper but much more bony that the Florida snapper) was excellent Lots of rice and beans, lots of fried plantains, fresh tomatoes, and pickly (a spicy Cole slaw). Every one had a good time and it was another great day. Kansas has just won and the noise level is very intense. Go Kansas. Final four is all number 1 seeds. Dave, our Kansas fan, just asked if he should turn down the TV. No was the reply but you can turn yourself off. That was funny! I enjoyed another one of Jeremy’s special cigars at the beach. It was very excellent. The beach was littered with garbage and trash and we watched it get washed into the sea. It was a very sad site. I hate to end on that note but it is time to do some exercise and stretch out my back. It continues to stay pain free but I did get hollered at this morning by David as I slept for awhile on my back and snored. David put in his ear plugs and went back to sleep. Both of us had joked that we wanted to be far away from John as he has snored loudly in the past and this time it was me. Yes, I apologized As always, thanks for taking the time to read this. I would love it if you would care to send along a comment or two. So far, only my family has been brave enough to comment. Come on fans!!!

Monday Noon

2008-03-31T12:25:00.003-05:00

Internet finally working so I'll try to catch up. Please say a prayerfor the man who came in with acute liver failure and we did all that we could to try to save him. It is sad to report that he was dead by 9:30 AM.

Back at you

2008-03-30T12:24:00.001-05:00

Papa Dick wanted to shut the generator off for awhile so I quickly published the blog just in case the internet goes out in the mean time. I’ll revert back to typing this in Word and cutting and pasting to the blog later when we have power.

We had a nice time at Ambians last evening. I stayed back at the clinic to rest while most of the team shopped in Jacmel. I needed rest more than shopping. They found some nice bargains and we met up at Ambians around 4 PM. We had the place mainly to ourselves which was better than the crowds at Karnival time. The street was as busy as ever and the stop light was not working until 5 PM. It is hilarious to watch some Haitians obey it and usually 1 or 2 motorbike operators ignore it. We did not see any wrecks however just 1 close call. I did get to enjoy my meal of conch (I do not think I have spelled it correctly) and it was delicious. I sat between Dr Nelson and Holly and we had a good visit. Jeremy shared one of his Honduran cigars with me and it was excellent. Jeremy was able to talk with his wife on Dick’s cell phone to let her know he was doing okay. Prestige beer was $ 2.00 at Ambians and the rum punch was $ 5.00. No, I will not divulge how many the team drank or even how many I consumed. I did enjoy sitting in the warm sun at Ambians and people watch-both Haitian and my team mates. There were very few “blancs” in Jacmel on Saturday. Blancs are anyone who is not white (Blanc = white). I was surprised at that as our plane was full of missionary Blancs and I had expected to see a team or a stray while we were in town. I expect that I’ll see some this afternoon at Ti Moulage. I also hope to get more warm sunshine time today.
It is too bad that we will not get to show off “Basin Bleu”, the waterfall in the mountains west of Jacmel, to this team. I suspect the road is not repaired from the January rain damage yet. You at home, who have the program “Google Earth”, can find some pictures of Basin Bleu, Jacmel, and Ti Moulage when you do a little “flying” with Google Earth on your computer. Try it some time, as I find it to be fun.
I wish I had more gossip to share with you but it is more fun to keep you and the team guessing what I will say or do next. I teased Diana that I wanted to buy her a beer or take a picture of her with a beer bottle but I was a good boy, for a change. I will share that David and Boyer were flying insect magnets at Ambians and I attribute that to what ever cologne they were wearing. It was interesting to see the cloud of insects hovering around their heads. Liz and Renee were on their best behavior – I say this to assure their family members who will better understand the hidden meaning of my remark. All in all, we just had a fun time with food, drink, laughter, and fellowship.
I just browsed through previous posts and I want to apologize for the many miss-spelled words. I am embarrassed and will try to run the spell checker and do a better proof read before I publish. To put it in to Target Pharmacy lingo-you must do a triple check-.
The internet is acting up again. The pages load very slowly, if they load at all.
The clinic is beginning to come alive so I’ll try to publish this and write more later.
It is now after the Sunday morning prayer service and the sharing was as wonderful. You learn more what this mission means to others and, from Dick and Barb, how the Haitian people appreciate the work that we do. I’ll again state how great it is to work with this team. So far, they have not been too annoyed by my teasing and my jokes. I understand that Katie has downloaded her pictures to one of the computers so I’ll put them on our jump drive and download them so you will be able to better picture our activities. It is time to save this as we are about to have electrical problems again. Wow for the first time in a week we can shut off the generator snd rely on EDH power.

Sunday morning

2008-03-30T06:14:00.002-05:00

The sun is up, I]ve slept late, the coffee is made, and the internet is back working. We lost the connection sometime yesterday morning and regained it this morning, I tried every remedy I could to fix it but the porblem was with Hughes Net and I did not have a way to do satellite repairs. Ha!
On Friday we saw 265 patients and then 131 yesterday for our 1/2 day clinic. This team has become very efficient and effective. Ther are very dedicated, fun loving, and easy to work with. The interaction between them as they share information about patients and problems would take a lot longer to be as smooth as it flows if we were in the States with all of PC problems and such.
Early Saturday morning, my friend Nego appeared at the patient staging area, Renel came to find me and I got to meet Nego's two sisters and made sure that they were seen. Nego is a young man from Jacmel who is involved in youth ministy here in Haiti. We try to visit each time I am here. He leaves for Ft Myers soon for a month's training with the Christian ministry group that he works with. I came back to the clinic and brought out Diana who is involved in youth campus ministry in Kentucky. She enjooyed meeting with him and was able to pray with a sick patient on the way back. This will be brief as the power is about to go off

Picture 1

2008-03-29T06:22:00.003-05:00

Renee & Ed

Cute girl

Mama and baby with Renee

Diana and her fan club

Picture 2

2008-03-29T06:17:00.001-05:00

Renee & Patient

Family

Notice the tee shirt

Liz and her new friend

Picture 3

2008-03-29T06:15:00.001-05:00

Yes, this is Renee's pictures if you could not tell.

David and friend

Bad burn on baby

Baby

Picture 4

2008-03-29T06:10:00.001-05:00

Jeremy and John

The cove where we swim

March FOTCOH girls

Nice family

Picture 5

2008-03-29T06:08:00.002-05:00

Smile for the camera

Renee, Linda, and Liz

Hello!!

Ed, Liz, and David