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Happening ... in the Local Church
Local Church members respond in Haiti
'I felt the Holy Spirit flying around those tents ...'
 Mindy
Clayton: “When you leave, you want to thank them for their strength,
their spirit, and what they give us ...” (Photo provided) |
 Lisette
Echterling: “Every day, life is difficult for them, but their
willingness to help each other is just amazing.” (Photo provided) |
By Kevin Cullen
The
Catholic Moment
WEST LAFAYETTE — Members of a medical team that just returned from Haiti say they will never forget the woman who gave birth while trapped in rubble … and broken bones that went untreated for a month … and homeless, penniless earthquake survivors who were thankful to be alive.
“They always thank you so much,” said Mindy Clayton, a registered nurse who attends the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Lafayette. “When you leave, you want to thank them for their strength, their spirit, and what they give us. They just fill my soul with happiness. This whole experience has really brought me into the spirit of Lent.”
She was among four nurses, four physicians and a nurse practitioner brought together by Jane Sellers, a parishioner at St. Thomas Aquinas Church, on the Purdue University campus. They returned to Indiana Feb. 12 after working for a week at St. Damiens Hospital for Children, just outside Port-au-Prince, and serving adult patients in tents pitched nearby.
The volunteers “jumped on this trip so quickly. I was blown away,” said Sellers, who has made many mission trips to Haiti with her husband, Duane.
The team provided post-operative care to some patients who had undergone surgery aboard the U.S.S. Comfort, an American hospital ship. Others had injuries that had gone untreated since the Jan. 12 disaster that killed at least 200,000 people.
The St. Damiens campus was set up to accommodate the needs of trauma patients of all ages. Volunteers from Haiti, Germany, Italy, the United States and other countries worked together.
“It was like a MASH unit,” Clayton said.
Approximately 80 percent to 90 percent of the injuries were caused by crushing. Truckloads of victims were still being brought in with broken bones; others had had limbs amputated, and needed follow-up care because of infection.
One woman had had a Caesarian section, without painkillers, while she was still trapped in a building. The baby died three days later; she was being treated for injuries caused when the scalpel cut her bladder.
But there were happy stories, too. Clayton recalled the woman who delivered her baby in the back of a car … with the help of Dr. Jack Williams, a member of the West Lafayette-based medical team.
“She was the most healthy little girl — nice, fat and round. She came right out, and her mom was OK,” Clayton said. “Life goes on … a new generation. That was a very happy moment for Jack and me.
“I felt the Holy Spirit flying around those tents, and that my guardian angel was on my shoulder,” she said. “When we couldn’t find things, they showed up.
“I had one lady who had lost all her children, her husband, her mother and father. She was the only one living in the family,” Clayton said.
But despite all that, “she knew she was saved by God. She felt that God had saved her to do something special. I thought, ‘What a way to look at it.’
“For 200 years, they have said, ‘Here I am again. It will all work out again.’”
“I know those people have touched my life ...”
Her husband, Don, is a Lafayette physician. They have been to Haiti many times since 2001, to help on medical missions. They also sponsored a young Haitian man through high school and college, and attended his wedding in December 2009 in Port-au-Prince.
Much of Dr. Clayton’s week was spent managing infections and providing post-operative care.
“The Haitians have a rough life, anyway,” he said. “They don’t have good sewers or clean water, and they often live in incredibly poor conditions. Now, most are living on the street, and more than a million people are living under blankets. They are starting to become ill. There were patients with malaria, people dehydrated, with fever.”
He said that he and his wife love Haiti, and Haitians. They have made many friends there, and they plan to return.
“I am glad I can do what I can do, because I know those people have touched my life,” Dr. Clayton said. “But you just feel like you would like to do more.”
“I felt so blessed that God sent me in that direction”
Another nurse, Mary Ann Meese, is a parishioner at St. Maria Goretti Church, Westfield. The trip was her fifth to Haiti.
“I felt God blessed me with the gift of nursing, so the least I could do was to share it,” she said. “They are so devout, so grateful for everything, even though they have nothing. They set an example of faith.”
She said that the Haitian people “live the beatitudes.”
While changing dressings and administering painkillers, she said, she was impressed by the devotion of family members. She recalled an elderly blind woman with a broken leg; her daughter never left her side. She bathed her, applied lotion to her skin, and brought sheets and clothing to make her more comfortable.
Meese said she saw many examples of great strength. Despite being in intense pain, most never complained. She said she cries sometimes when she thinks about them.
“They humble me,” she said. “They have taught me patience, humility and gratitude. I can’t wait to go back. I felt so blessed that God sent me in that direction. To be able to help even one person is a blessing … even though I don’t speak the language, to hold a hand or look in the eyes, the communication is there; it’s just not verbal.”
Meese said she wanted to thank her husband and her co-workers at St. Vincent Home Care in Indianapolis. Without their support, she said, she couldn’t have made the trip.
Another team member, Lisette Echterling, 23, had made four previous trips to Haiti. She is a graduate of the St. Elizabeth School of Nursing in Lafayette, and a former member of St. Augusta Church in Lake Village. She works as a nurse at Advocate Christ Medical Center, a Level One trauma center on Chicago’s South Side.
“It was extremely hard for me,” she said. “I had been to Haiti many times, but the ironic thing was that I had just signed up with a volunteer organization to go there for a year when the quake hit.”
Saddened by the news from Port-au-Prince, she signed on with the first medical team she could find.
St. Damiens Hospital, she said, had good equipment, water service and electricity. The children were inside and four large tents were set up outside to serve adults. One was an intensive care unit.
“The patients’ families help change the patients’ clothes and sheets, feed them, help them to the bathroom. The families would bring food and water. My job as a nurse was to check on wounds, do dressing changes, do medications, check vital signs, keep them pain free, clean and dry,” she said.
Echterling saw many amputations, and a surprising number of burns. People who were cooking when the earthquake hit often were scorched by flames or drenched in hot grease.
Often, mechanical devices called “external fixators” were used to quickly treat fractures without having plaster casts made. But when they rub, open wounds often develop.
In Port-au-Prince, many unburied bodies remain in the rubble of buildings. Fires are being set with gasoline to burn the corpses and help prevent the spread of disease.
When the rainy season arrives in March, Echterling said, mosquitoes will multiply and malaria and typhoid will spread. Too many people are crammed together in tent cities, without proper sanitation.
“I am very grateful I was able to go,” she said. “I feel I made a difference. I am still pursuing my opportunity to stay for a year. I feel this is the beginning for me. They are amazing people, with an amazing culture, deeply rooted in religion.
“What touched me most is that they are so eternally grateful for anything you do for them,” she said of her patients. “They are so grateful and so thankful even for a little bit of water.
“Every day, life is difficult for them, but their willingness to help each other is just amazing,” she said. “A family that would be there to care for one patient would share its food with three other patients. They are willing to give the very last thing they have to help someone else.”
Have you been to Haiti since the quake? We’d like to tell your story. Call Kevin Cullen at 800-942-2397 (in the Lafayette area call 742-2050).