To our Chief Medical Officer:
Thank you for your bringing us together as a team and for your outstanding leadership and support of us all. Your presence until the very moment of take-off helped eased our anxiety of the unknown.
Our arrival was crazy at first, but now settling in. We have built a pediatric OR adjacent to the main OR. We have nearly 20 cases on the schedule for OR tomorrow. Many crushed and gangrenous limbs. Dr. Mario Reyes and Dr. Andrea Maggioni are doing great in the pediatric tent. We have taken responsibility there fully. We are caring for 60 kids in the tent, all with major issues. More come in with each hour. Team is more relaxed tonight. We are all together under a big tent. Everyone is well.
Will re-asses transport of kids in a.m.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The tent creaks like an old ship rolling in a gentle tide. The cots are in the hundreds and with each turn or roll the whole place seems to move like a sea of dominoes falling in slow motion. The suffering is unimaginable. The reports on the news are very, very real. The dead limbs seem to be highlighted by the flimsy strips of white plaster someone somewhere tried desperately to apply. The crushed faces stare out, often from just one eye. The bandaged heads bob from the cots with dates or names or numbers written on the bandages. It is unimaginable.
What is also unimaginable is how this place, a few days ago just a strip of dusty grass, has evolved. The Medishare hospital now has several tents serving as wards, ORs, storage units and command centers. Dr. Green and the rest of the UM team, along with the Medishare volunteers, truly, truly are heroes. I use that word, hero, as I never have before.
Last night the Miami Children's Hospital group had the honor of joining the team. Our group was amazing. The pediatricians and our amazing nurses took over the care of the kids, relieving an exhausted group from Baltimore. They were awesome to watch as they went from child to child, many who were orphaned, and assessed their needs and care. By the end of the night our team knew the name and problem of every child there. The nurses started IVs, hung medications, and changed bandages all night long.
The OR team made me so proud. The three surgeons and our nursing unit worked all night with our amazing colleagues from UM and other places around the country to help finish building the operating room, including a dedicated pediatric OR. We begin formulating a plan for each injured child with Dr. Swarsky getting ready for the bone work and Dr. Knight and I planning operations for all kids with wounds, burns and lacerations. All through the night, just as we thought we finalized the OR list for the day, a new child seemed to appear with a problem worse than the previous. The hospital is maxed out, but how do you say “no” to the 6-year-old with 80 percent burns or the 12-year-old with the nearly torn-off arm? It is profound.
Friday, January 22, 2010
The sun has just started rising above the Haitian mountain tops and my tent-mates are stirring. The smell of smoke from the fires and bug spray fills the air, and is an almost pleasant odor.
The surgeries we will do today will be some the most emotionally difficult of our careers. It's not difficult work technically, but it's brutal on the soul of the surgeon. Yet the thumbs-up from patients, the smiles, the peek-a-boo from behind a blanket are the clues from our kids that they are well; that they will survive and they will triumph.
Addendum from Dr. Mario Reyes
We forgot: formulas, Pedialyte and milk. There is nothing to feed those kiddos here. Before us, doctors and nurses were giving their portions to the patients!
From: Chad A. Perlyn, MD, Miami Children’s Hospital
Sent: Fri Jan 22 06:22:17 2010