Haiti Happenings: Grace Hospital

Grace Hospital reception area

This is actually Thursday's post--not sure why it didn't get posted!

Today I visited Grace Children's Hospital which is on Delmas 31, not far from where the school land is. Gertrude and I took Mickey there for a chest x-ray. The doctors keep testing him for TB even though the previous five tests and previous x-rays have all shown that he doesn't have it. The best guess by a visiting P.A. is that Mickey's lungs have been scarred in the past and that breathing will always be difficult for him. That means he will most likely be on oxygen for the rest of his life, however long that may be.

Laboratory waiting area

Grace Hospital

However, the belief seems to be that if he's not getting better, there must be a medicine out there that will make him better, such as an antibiotic. Unfortunately, that type of medicine won't help scarred lungs. The medical care here is so poor, it's a wonder anyone gets better after being sick. The general public also is so under-educated that they don't know to or how to question a doctor. Even after patients have it patiently explained to them in Creole about how to take medication (2X/day for 10 days), they usually don't take it the correct way, rendering it ineffective. Even Gertrude, who is an intelligent, educated woman, struggles to understand that there may not be a medicine that will cure Mickey. You know, in America, not only do we get information about medications from the pharmacist, but we can always go online and find out more information than we know what to do with. That option isn't available to Haitians, or they don't know to do it.

Mickey!

That was a long diversion to my telling about the x-ray. First of all, Gertrude knows everyone, so instead of waiting in line for hours, we were able to go first. Now that's pull. We all sat in the x-ray room while the x-ray was taken. None of us had lead protection on. And the x-ray technician wasn't behind any protective wall. There was one of those lead blankets hanging on the wall, but it wasn't used.

After the hospital, we drove to the school land to meet with an architect who will design blueprints for us. It was kind of cool to be talking about it because it makes it even more real! I can't wait to see what he comes up with. I know we're still miles away from making this a reality, but it's one more step!

X-ray room

My tour guide job didn't pan out today because the truck was needed to run other errands and pick up kids from school. That's okay. We postponed the trip til tomorrow, but instead of using the guesthouse truck, we are going to use a tap tap owned by a friend of a friend. That will give us more flexibility in where we go and what time we have to be back!