As an on-call physician in Haiti, she worked 36-hour shifts

by Colleen Redman

“This is what I did in Haiti,” beamed Dr. Sue Osborne as she showed off a photo of the newborn Haitian twins she delivered. The DO, who heads up Floyd’s Barter Clinic, recently spent a week in Haiti caring for patients in the aftermath of the deadly earthquake that struck the island this past January.

Because a previous relief trip to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina had proven to be unorganized, Osborne says she was careful in choosing the team she would work with in Haiti. Partnering with Medishare, a healthcare relief project of the University of Miami Global Institute, she worked alongside other American and Haitian physicians and health professionals in a tent hospital near the Port-au-Prince airport. “It was a good experience,” she reported.

“I couldn’t afford a plane ticket to Miami,” Osborne said, explaining that she had planned to drive the 14 hours to Miami, where Medishare would then fly her to Haiti. She was surprised and grateful when she learned that her church, The Presbyterian Church of Floyd, raised the money for her flight to Miami. In exchange, she agreed to put on a slide show presentation for the congregation upon her return.

Unfortunately, the story about the Haitian twins doesn’t have a happy ending, as many stories in Haiti don’t. After helping the mother bond with her newborns, Osborne learned that the twins would be going to an American orphanage for adoption because their mother lost her husband in the earthquake and had no means to support herself. Adopting Haitian babies is popular, Osborn said, but she would prefer that people adopt a Haitian family and support them to stay together.

Osborne related another story about a paraplegic patient who was injured by gunshot before the earthquake. He was so depressed that he had a sheet over his head for the first few days of her rounds. Drawing him out, she discovered that he was a fan of American rapper 50 Cent. Osborne plans to write a letter to 50 Cent encouraging him to visit the hospital camp. “When celebrities come, people start donating money and supporting the hospital.” Medishare hopes to raise enough money to build a permanent hospital in Haiti.

“Most of my patients were spinal cord injuries,” said Osborne, who was assigned to the Medical Surgery unit but also worked in the Emergency room and Pediatric tent. As an on-call physician she worked 36 hour shifts. In Medical Surgery she mainly treated wounds and managed pain. Half of her patients were earthquake victims and half were there for ongoing illnesses and trauma. About her co-workers, she said, “They were great. We had to look out for each other because it was a stressful environment.”

Another paraplegic patient that Osborne treated had been injured in the earthquake. She helped to get him up and walking again with the aid of crutches and braces and was pleased to know that he was set to be discharged, flown by helicopter back to his province where he hadn’t seen his wife and children in three months. He was lucky to have a place to go, she said. “Haiti has no plans for the disabled. They don’t get hired. They are taken care of by their families, if they have therm.”

“That’s David who worked in supply,” she pointed to another photo. “He was my sheet connection. Somehow he found them,” she said, adding that sheets were scarce to non-existent. Another photo showed a Haitian woman carrying a bag of laundry on her head. Osborne explained that patients had sheets if their family provided them and family members did patient’s laundry. “People came with their entire families,” she said. “They lived in the provinces and couldn’t afford gas back and forth. Many slept on the floor.”

Osborne, who went to high school and graduated in Floyd, made her own mosquito netting from material that she purchased at Schoolhouse Fabrics before leaving Floyd. She slept on a cot in a tent that slept 140 other volunteer workers and wore “whatever the mosquitoes couldn’t bite through.” It was over 90 degrees in the daytime and she drank water constantly, when it was available. Meals, mostly sandwiches, were referred to as MRE’s, Meals Ready to Eat, and were delivered in. Because fruits and vegetables weren’t readily provided, she appreciated being able to pick fresh mangos from a nearby tree.

“The rainy season starts in May,” Osborne noted. Even so, it rained hard several times when she was there and sometimes it dripped or sleeted into some of the tents. Medical units were equipped with fans and air-conditioners, although the air-conditioning wasn’t reliable.

The hospital compound included a kid’s tent where TV and toys were available. There was a support group being conducted during Osborne’s stay and even a morgue on site. Osborne said during the week she was there her unit only lost one patient. That patient was an elderly woman who died of a heart attack. She had been admitted into Medical Surgery because there was no where else to put her. The emergency room lost as many as six patients in one night.

Osborne studied Creole on the internet before going to Haiti. “It worked out pretty well,” she said. Well enough that she could understand the Haitian preacher who visited the hospital tent twice a day and led the patients and their families in song with a refrain of ‘Thank you God.’

On the one tour to Port-au-Prince that Osborne took with other relief workers, she saw buildings that had been destroyed by the earthquake. People were shoveling rubble and using it to shore up their tarp shelters in a downtown tent city. Vendors were busy selling and precocious children were persistently begging for money. “That’s just how they say hello,” she joked.

Although relief workers were warned ahead of time not to fall for vending scams or encourage the begging children, on the day Osborne left for home, she bought 2 large shells for her son Mars from a man who said he was going to use the money to buy his daughters school uniforms. Mars had wanted a t-shirt but Osborne never saw any. She thinks she will order one online for him from Medishare. Or maybe she’d go back to Haiti sometime in the future and find him one this time.

From her Barter Clinic office in the Cross Creek building she nodded and smiled. “I’d go again in a heartbeat!” she said

Note: Donations to Project Medishare can be made online at.projectmedishare.org.