July 2008

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.

March Mission to Haiti

Hello once again.
Here comes the March mission, rushing forward like the proverbial March Lion. We leave on March 23 in order to get to O’Hare airport for a 6:15AM flight from Chicago to Miami. Our small team is made up of 9 nurses, 2 non medical people, and your favorite pharmacist-me! There are 4 people coming from the state of Washington, 1 from Minnesota. 1 from Kentucky, and 6 (I think-I do not have addresses on two but I assume they are from Illinois) from Illinois. I am not sure, at this point, how many are FOTCOH experienced workers and how many are first timers. We do not have a USA physician. We will need to rely on Dr. Frantz Nelson. He is a Dominican Republic trained Haitian physician. He helps out Dr Garron Lukas, our FOTCOH surgeon, during Garron’s trips to Haiti. He also works with Dr Martinez, the Jacmel OB-GYN physician who has our operating suite in his office and lets us do surgeries there. So this will be a most interesting mission. I doubt that we will be able to do much in the way of treating new patients and I think our focus will be on refills for existing Haitians. It is a wait and see situation, for sure.
The geographical separation of the team is making it hard to get all of our needs shipped in our two 50 lb allowed baggage. For example, I have almost 280 lbs of vitamins and no way to get them in to Haiti on time unless I have them carried in. In times past, we have had bags seized by Haitian customs when they contained medications. The customs people want us to pay them a duty in order to get our bags. This causes a long delay and often costs hundreds of dollars. Not a good use of FOTCOH’s donations, for sure. I am still hopeful of a better solution. In the mean time, I will ship out the excess that I have so it will be there for the May team.
One other issue that I should mention is my health. During the Valentine’s Day week last month, I drove with my wife, my sister-in-law, my nephew and his girl friend to Dallas Texas for a wedding. It was about a 14 hour ride. The ride down was uneventful except for some ice we encountered around Springfield, Mo. We enjoyed ourselves at my nephew’s wedding. On the way home, I allowed my 47 year old nephew to drive my BMW X-5. He proceeded to drive around 95 MPH while returning calls on his cell phone. Needless to say, that made me quite tense. The next driver was my wife. She recently had cataract surgery on both eyes and this would be the first time she drove with her “new” eyes. Again, I got just a little tense helping her to navigate the St. Louis Mo. Interstate puzzle. We arrived home around midnight on Friday. Saturday was a great day and we caught up on a few projects. Sunday was a different story. My back and right leg hurt so bad I could not get out of bed to go to Mass. I went to my internist on Monday for my regularly scheduled yearly checkup. He prescribed a muscle relaxant. This did not make any dent in the pain. On Tuesday, I had a therapeutic massage and that gave me some relief. On Wednesday, it was off to the Chiropractor. Dr Mark has now worked with me regularly since and I am relatively pain free-IF I do lots of stretches and exercises. I have also been seen by a rehab doctor who specializes in spinal trauma. So now it is almost two weeks later. I am spending over 1 hour in the gym each day, doing lots of stretches, going to the chiropractor 3 times a week for bone cracking, spinal traction, and heat/ice therapy. I have just come from the spinal rehab doc and she will give me a spinal injection of Lidocaine & steroids on Friday, March 14.

That should ease the inflammation and pain and allow me to go on the mission as planned. I will have to figure out which exercises I can do during the trip and at the clinic to avoid the flare ups. There is a lot of arthritis on L-5. I must be getting older. HA!

As I stated earlier, this should be a most interesting mission. I hope I have not bored you with my medical problems. I also hope you will continue to follow the blog. I appreciate all of your prayers and support.

Friday afternoon January 25 5:11PM

I am boiling mad. I have just ended another day of over 350 patients-maybe even over 400 and I check my email before dinner-with a glass od cold Sauvignon Blanc wine or two. Incidentally, Jean Michel,one of our main Haitian employees and a Mormon minister, has joined me in hoisting a glass of wine. I nearly dropped the bottle when he asked for it. Ha! Back to the mad. On December 26, I shipped 10 cases of medications to Lynx Air and they got them on January 2 BUT they are still in Fort Lauderdale as they are "backed up" from the holidays. We needed those medications NOW not months later. I wish I were in the States to call them and vent my anger. I would never have dreamed that our meds would be this delayed. You can imagine my tone when I call them next week when I am back in Fort Lauderdale. WE HAVE TO FIND ANOTHER WAY. On the good news side, Dr.. Matha Willi, Dr Patel, Pharmacist Tom Rickey. Sister Rachel Bergschneider and some others stopped by today on their way home from their mission in the Haiti mountains. I ran out of the pharmacy, squirt gun in hand, and shocked everyone as I sprayed Martha with cold water. It was a riot!!! That team had a great mission and it was good to visit with them. It is an early supper tonight so I will stop and continue to boil!!!

Wednesday evening January 23, 2008

It is almost dinner time and I am going to start this now and finish after dinner. I have just had a nice shower, a glass of white wine, a few peanuts, and about ½ hour of just sitting at the end of my work day. Life is good-almost.

We are again experiencing internet problems. After we got out on the net this morning, we again experienced the problem of getting out and seeing the indication that there is a problem with our account. Help is supposed to be on the way, yet tonight. I’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Last night, I joined the boys on the porch about 8 PM and we finally struggled off to bed at 10:30 pm so it was a very short night. To top that off, we smoked a very nice Cuban cigar. I enjoyed the smoke but I can still taste it in my mouth. Last night, I brushed my teeth 3 times and the taste stayed with me. Bet you are laughing at me for that!!

On Tuesday, we did see 317 patients plus about 20 of Garron’s surgical patients. I am not sure, at this moment, the count for today. It was estimated in the millions but we had to cut off the estimator’s beer as it is affecting his estimates. I suspect it will be near to Tuesday’s total
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Lots of screaming kids today made for one of the nosier clinics I can remember. So far, the only mosquitoes we encountered were on the bus in Port-Au-Prince. We did see a bat last night. Maybe he is keeping the bugs in check. The entire crew’s health remains great. Debbie’s ankle swells up in the evenings but is down in the morning. Sharon Doran seems to attract insect bites and we are wondering why she is the only one bothered by that. No speculation, please!

We have had interesting cases galore. I hesitate to write about them. I do not want you to worry. I do not want you to think about all of the sickness, stress, and conditions here. We had one small baby with HIV and that was a tear jerker. Today, we had a VERY cute 18 month old girl in the pharmacy line. She has a little backpack, a darling dress, pigtails with bows, and beautiful large brown eyes. Sharon beckoned to the child and she ran into Sharon’s arms. That lasted a short while and when I tried to get a picture; our girl decided that Mom was where she wanted to be. We tried for several minutes before we could get her to look at the camera. We put her down, to fill her order and she promptly decided to come back into the pharmacy and sit right in the middle of the traffic lane. That is like sitting at the center of the busiest intersection in your home town at supper time. The traffic did not bother her at all. She played with her stuffed toy, tried to make eye contact with Sharon, her mother, and even me. That was a real treat. We had several large families today. I think there were about 8 sets of 7 family members. That is a challenge for the pharmacy as well as the interpreters. We were not done tonight until sometime after 5. There was some sort of a crisis involving treatments late in the afternoon that slowed down the providers.

It is now early on Thursday morning so I’ll post this to blogspot. AsI told you earlier, our internet help is on the way and he arrived after supper and gave us the password so that we could log on. It seems that Hughesnet noticed the increased activity on this account and needed to check it out. I will help Dick to store it in a safe place. I need to write more but I want this out for you now.

January mission to Haiti soon.

Heello from sunny Florida. I am here resting up for the next mission to Haiti with The Friends of The Children of Haiti (www.fotcoh.org). We leave late Saturday night, January 19 and will return on Friday evening, February 1. This years team is made op with many experienced members and some new ones also. I will miss my wife this time, as she has elected to stay in Peoria, especially since I'll be making 3 missions in 2008. I believe that I have shipped all of the medications that we will need for this mission. I will have to carry in some supplies, however that I just realized that I had not sent. I'm looking forward to another great mission. I do enjoy my work in Haiti and I do believe we are making a difference in the lives of many people there. I will try to post to this blog on a daily basis-depending on how tired I am at the end of the day.

Sunday morning

Wow, I slept in today as it is almost 6 AM. I did not get my planned nap yesterday so I will try again today while many of the group makes the trip to the waterfall. Saturday was a short day at the clinic and we finished at the pharmacy at 12:30 PM. For those of you keeping track, we treated 142 on our first day, 324 on the second day, 342 on the third day, 293 on the fourth day, and 200 yesterday. That totals 1301. So we have done some good work and, at that pace, should see over 2000. As I feared, we will have to limit the adult vitamins but I expected that. I am not sure that my scoop method works well for those tiny pills. I had extra help again as the time to close drew near and they are more experienced in what goes on , they are swifter and have less questions. The doe chart for the chloroquine liquid saves time, pre-filling the vermox oral syringes saves times, and the pre-printed bag labels are still a blessing. Last night was our trip to Jacmel. The first wave left the compound around 2 PM to shop at the art stores and experience the city. I have been warned NOT to make mention of any purchases of paintings, statues, and jewelry, so in keeping with my promise I will not even begin to have you imagine a US dollar figure that might have boosted the Jacmel economy. For those who have been here, Boyer’s brother Jacky, stopped by yesterday and invited me to come outside the compound gate to look over his selection of paintings, statues, and jewelry. He has about 20 oils and some of them are eye catching. Donna has already warned me not to buy any as we have no where to hang another one. Jacky’s prices were $ 20, $ 40, and $ 60 for the paintings. We will likely see more merchandise for sale this afternoon at Ti Moulage, the beach where we will swim and have our Sunday dinner. I’m not sure what time today we will have our prayer service but I imagine it will be early as they will have to leave for the water fall before 10 AM. Today will be a busy day of rest. Ha
During our meal at Ambians last night, a storm came in from the east. Weather here comes westward off the coast of Africa. I watched the clouds roll in and wondered if and when it would rain. Fortunately it occurred while we were eating. I was sitting in the row closest to the street and felt an occasional spray from the hard rain. The storm had a nice variety of lightning but I did not notice a string wind. There was a limb down in the road on our way home so there must have been some wind. We watched in sadness as the rain washed the garbage down the street and knew that it would soon end up in Jacmel bay. The team has spent enough time together that any and every one is open to be teased at any time. I took some teasing about my pretty pint Jacmel shirt and that was one of the reasons that I brought it along. There continues to be a tease about some undergarments and I would just love to name names but I fear retaliation or Haitian revenge. I’ve told my new pharmacy helpers that I plan to spread the word that they did drugs while in Haiti. Our visit to Ambians was much better that in February. We had the place to ourselves except for a few others during the evening. I did purchase a bottle of Argentine Chardonnay and shared it with any willing takers. I also had a rum punch and a Prestige. Serving the dinners turned out as usual. First the rolls, then 10 minutes later the butter, then 10 minutes later the salad. You begin to see the pattern. When the entrée was served it came out in shifts and they substituted some plates as they did not have enough of something, but I’ve forgotten just what that was. I had ordered the kabob and it was a good as ever. Luckily the rain stopped and we made it home fairly dry. As we drove down the lane from the main road into the compound we did get sprayed from the wet tree limbs. It’s time for me to help set up the prayer service so I’d better close this and get a move on. Thanks to those who have submitted comments to the blog. The only one I rejected was the one I could not translate but it appeared to be an advertisement or a link to who knows where so it will remain unpublished.

Welcome to Haiti

It’s Tuesday morning at 5:15 AM. The sun will be up in about 30 minutes. I am on the third floor balcony looking out to the Southeast. There is a small boat out on the water with 3 men fishing. The skyline is gray with the morning haze. The small breeze is refreshing and nice. It is probably 15 degrees cooler outside than in side the clinic so it is fun to sit here and watch the sun come up as I type.
On Sunday night at 11PM, I left for the airport. About half way there, I realized that I’d not packed my passport so we turned around and returned home to retrieve it. No matter, our bus did not show up until midnight. It took just a short while to load the bus and we were off on this adventure. The bus ride was uneventful. The DVD of “The Simpson’s” was the movie. I dozed a bit after that as it was hard to doze with the noise. We arrived at O’Hare at 3 AM. There were, already, several people there and a couple of large groups ahead of us in line. When we stated to check in at 4:30 AM we encounter our first problem. American Airlines, with its announced embargo, would not take our tote containers that we had specially purchased in response to that embargo. They told us that totes are, boxes and no boxes are allowed due to the embargo. It took many calls and almost 1 hour before we were allowed to check in. Whew. We managed to get checked in, through TSA security, etc with minimal problems. I had failed to remove my quart sized bag of shave cream so my bags were checked by TSA and I did not loose the product. Fortified by Starbucks coffee, we got on a full flight to Miami and arrived on time at the D concourse. Our next flight, in 3 hours was from the “A” concourse and that meant a 20 minute walk between terminals for our exercise. We ate lunch at the Mexican restaurant and Jane Mai, a second year medical student from Tampa, met up with us. She is a lovely young oriental who, influenced by meeting Dr. Paul Farmer, was inspired to work in Haiti and found out about our team. She is friendly and personable and will be a great asset. On a side note, this team has come together quite well and it will be another fun adventure.
Our plane was late and full leaving Miami. What else is new? When we arrived in Haiti, we cleared immigration in record time and I complimented the agent on the swiftness of the process. That was a mistake as it took more than 1 hour for our plane to be unloaded and, to our joy and surprise, our containers were the last to be unloaded in typical Haitian fashion. Now the process begins of getting your bags and boxes and get through customs. Someone else had my container so I switched with her and faced the music. After I had to show the agent how to open the ties-much to his surprise, he merely pawed through the box, picked up the bag of very powerful injectables, much to my dismay, and promptly put them back neatly and I was on my way. About 8 of us seemed to be targeted for inspection but no seizures and no customs charges. Yeah!. We departed the terminal, into the mob of people and our Haitian helpers guided us to the truck that would take our luggage to Jacmel and also take us to the small airport. We loaded up, like sardines in a can, and raced to the other end of the airfield. It too Carbintair about 45 minutes of Haitian stalling for us to get on the two small planes for our 18 minute flight over the mountains to Jacmel. Dick, Barb, Bruce, Dan, and, of course, Digone met us at the Jacmel end. We loaded our carryon and ourselves into the two trucks for the short trip to the clinic. Jean Michel, Eric and I rode the back bumper and Jean Michele and I chose to walk from the min road back to the clinic as Son Son’s Tap-Tap was dragging bottom as we drove over the rough rocky ground. It was fun to spend that time with Jean Michel, one of our main men, here in Haiti.
The clinic was as clean as ever and the new team members marvel at our luxurious accommodations. I began to uncover the pharmacy and prepare it to open. We ate one of my favorite meals, Thanks to our Haitian cooks, of tomatoes, onions, lobster in a stew, with rice and beans and pickly, the hot Cole slaw. It was a nice welcome. Our main bags arrived at 10 PM and we had them broken down in about a half hour. There was some leakage of shampoos inside the bags and boxes but no real damage that I can see. A quick note to the pharmacy committee that the new light bulb did not solve the problem with the pill counting machine so I will have some one here look at it but I will not count on it for this mission. Soon it will be breakfast and off to work. We give thanks to God for our safe journey here and for the many blessings He bestows on us.

Here in Haiti

We arrived late into Port-Au-Prince but were able to catch the plane to Jacmel so you know we have arrived safely. I am very tired and have been up now almost 45 hours so this will be brief. I just wanted you to know that we got here. I'll write more about our adventures tomorrow when I am rested. Yes it is hot and sticky. I am sweating quite well, thank you. Please know you are in our prayers.

Soon to be off

Tomorrow we will begin the July mission to Haiti. I am excited that I can return to assist the people in the Jacmel area as best that I can. I am hoping to meet up with Brother Nego. He is a youth minister in Jacmel. We've corresponded via email so far.
Our packing party went smooth but my bags are very overweight so I've had to remove some soap. baby blankets, lotions, food, and other items in order to accommodate some last minute medications. I hope we do not have problems at customs!!! Our new tote boxes, in response to American Airlines cargo embargo, do not hold as much bulk and 50 lbs comes very easily. Our weather forecast is for hot and muggy conditions. Please keep us in your prayers as you are in mine.

Team preparation for July Mission

We will soon have our second team meeting for the upcoming July medical mission. We will have a team made up of some first timers and some old timers. It should be a fun trip. Today I heard that the April-May team had some problems with American Airlines and did not get to arrive in Haiti until later than planned. That forced them to spend the night in Port-Au-Prince. They were also expected to arrive in Jacmel late this morning so that will cause them problems today. I'll keep you posted as I hear more.