The patients that were treated in our hospital

These were few patients that we’ve seen in the Project Medishare for Haiti – Field Hospital:

1 yrs old with battery acid ingestion. He drank a cup of clear fluid that looked like water, that apparently was a car battery acid. He was transferred from another hospital. As the ambulance brought him in, he was pretty lethargic and was not crying anymore. The doctor who took the patient in didn’t know what to do with him. This is not exactly something you deal with on a regular basis back in the States. He ended up calling the California Poison Control stating to the counsler on the other side “I’m going to be the phone call of your day… I am calling you from Haiti”. After receiving all the pertaining information the Poison Control counsler adviced us to leave the kid alone and see how he does. The child started sitting down comfortably half an hour later and a little later was behaving like nothing happen. Go figure 

During the time that a lung cancer hospice patient was dying in my ED, a car pulled over stating that a patient having chest pain. The woman who was the patient was sitting comfortably, did not show any signs of respiratory distress, wasn’t grimacing or guarding, and was not profusely sweating. I had to wipe my tears, get my shit together and treat her. Surprisingly, when I took her blood pressure it showed 240/180. I was shocked. Never seen blood pressure that high. We ended up getting aggressive medication treatment for her over four hours without any results. We kept giving her different medications and nothing was affecting the blood pressure. It was still up. At some point during these four hours she fell asleep and was snoring. Me and the doc, who worked with me, joked that she is sleeping better than we do. Eventually, one medication worked and we admitted her to Med Surg unit for observation.

An ambulance transferred a premature baby, who was 2 days old and didn’t eat since he was born. He was dehydrated and starving and didn’t really look human.

During a day shift, right before I was supposed to start working, one of the docs came up to me and asked if I wanted to see a gunshot wound. I replied “Of course”. As I approached the ED, he said that the guy came in after an assassination attempt with two gunshot wounds, one to the head and the other to the abdomen. The doc pointed to a curtain and said “Go!”. I remember thinking to myself, how come I can’t see anybody around the patient. Oh well… I pulled the curtain open. There was a guy lying on a gurney. Surprisingly, he was not moving. I looked at his face and realized that his eyes were rolled back. It finally figured out… “ha… he is dead”. Apparently, earlier when he was brought in, he dropped out of the car already pulseless. Our medical professionals didn’t even initiate CPR. I just wish that I was told prior to entering to see the patient that he was dead.

Trauma patient came in after motor vehicle accident. It was bus versus bicycle. Guess what he was on? His skull was open and you could see the brain. Also, doctors figured that he had a massive stomach bleed. They decided to rush him into an emergency surgery. When they opened him up they realized that his liver was ruptured in two places. He was packed with gauze and closed up temporarily to hopefully stop the bleeding and figure out what to do later.

Woman came in with a infection on her foot all the way up to her knee. She stated that she never injured the leg and this swelling and pus developed over the last three days. She was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis and taken into emergency surgery to remove the leg. She died 30 minutes after the surgery.

6 years old kid was brought in for head injury after fall. He had a 2 in laceration on the forehead and was vomiting. We didn’t have CT, so head bleed could not be ruled out. Due to that, he was kept in for observation in the pediatric unit for 24 hrs. When I came back the day after I realized that his mother left him in the hospital and wasn’t going to come back.

The cool thing about working in the ED in Haiti is that if a pt comes in for something simple like a headache without neurological deficit or constipation, or something that we in the ED consider a non-emergency. We would just give do a quick assessment, come to realization that’s it’s not an emergency and send them off right away with Tylenol or just tell them to go to a clinic. No admission papers, no discharge teaching, no waste of time. It was really nice. In Haiti we did what we really want to do in the US sometimes.