Medical issues

Hello,

What an eventful week! After 4 days of "sitting" after the earthquake, I finally feel I'm on a role with doing something. Lots of stuff coming in and not sure where my place will be but I'm getting some more 'visions'.

Sat. Megan, Katie, and Anna left. Megan's father is in the army and he arranged a Black Hawk helicopter to come pick them up. What a dad will do for his kid, eh?! Of course it meant waiting for hours, since we didn't know what time they'd arrive.

PM Dr Ric and 2 other doctors and a couple other workers arrived, by private plane. They picked up me and some of the kids for translating and we headed to Pierre Payen. With the road fixed, it's only about 10 minutes from here. We started seeing the patients that were admitted and worked till about 9:30. We stayed the night at their guesthouse and continued all day today. What tragic injuries for many of them. Basically all had fractures - some really bad ones. By now they're 4-5 days old and infections are starting. They were still gaping open. Deep ugly wounds; an ankle with infection that will probably get amputated soon; 2 whose house fell on their upper backs and bent them forward - injurying their spinal cord and now they're paraplegic; an arm that's got parts of a bone missing so won't be able to grow back together; kinds with head injuries; I could go on and on. We put 3 people's legs on traction, made with a pillowcase and sand, for about 6 weeks. After awhile we didn't even asked how it happened - it was all the same "the roof fell down". We did get two vehicle accidents too, that were awful. The first they brought in a woman that was already gone. In the second a man's face was all swollen - so many facial fractures and they couldn't help him. Don't know what they're gonna do with him. He needs a facial surgeon.

And this is such a SMALL part of the medical needs in this country. Everywhere it's the same. I'm thinking of scouting around some cities outside of Port, like the Island, etc and see if I can organize medical teams there. Pray for this - I don't know if that would work, but....

I heard even today, they've been finding some people alive. A little girl was rescued today. People are not all fed yet. A big part of the people are sleeping outside yet - either because they have no house, or scared of the weakness of their houses. (You people are probably seeing more about Port than we do here. I haven't seen a single TV program on it). People are traveling north by the FULL busloads and truckloads.

S. Gladys has heard from many of the churches she's in charge of. Theirs like 4000 of their church people without homes. Many pastors died, so it's a little like sheep without a shepherd. We want to try going to Ti Goave, one of the main centers, tomorrow. If we don't get diesel, we won't be able to, but hopefully.... and I'll start looking into the medical situation and see if it would be feasible to send in doctors.

Here at Canaan, we've been doing good. We still have enough food, that we haven't had to buy, but will have to soon start looking around. I think we'll be ok. We've reduced to 2 meals a day, and more simply. Finding diesel/gas is our biggest challenge right now.

We are also looking at the possibility of a lot of people coming though, so looking at setting up tents and sheets and whatever possible to house them. Many of the kid's families have lost all their homes too. We're not sure how to handle all this so pray for wisdom. It's a little different from the hurricane way of doing it. It's kind of pointless to give rice and beans because they have nothing left to cook it. We need to give them cooked food. Thanks to money coming in, we can start. None of the banks are open yet, but with so many doctor teams coming, we should have opportunity to send the money collected with them. So please, continue giving if you can. You can get all the necessary contact info at www.canaanorphanage.org. Chris is our "American" representative, and is collecting all the money and in charge of sending it down.

One of the good things that we definitely see is that people are taking life more seriously. Many of our kids have looked at where they're at. Today 16 of them were baptized. People are praying more. Some are even singing and worshipping more.

OK, generator's going off so I better go to my room. Time for bed anyway. Just pray I can be used in whatever way. It was great to see the gratitude in the patients we helped today. A little care and ability to speak in their language went a long way to making them feel more relaxed. (I still like being a doctor better than being a nurse. I feel a little lost working as a nurse (lol), but this type of doctoring is WAY beyond me. I'm immensely glad they're here. It was kind cool though, starting lots of IVs and doing catheters, though mostly we just helped with their minor surgeries.

God bless and keep praying!! Thanks for all your supports!!

Elsie Kornelsen