Tammy (one of my partners on Holidays with the Cricut) sent me this article from the Washington Post about her son, Patrick, who is part of the relief effort in Haiti! Isn’t this amazing? What a wonderful son to have! I have met this man and he is absolutely fearless. giving and kind - what a tribute to Tammy, her family and America! Washington Post February 1, 2010 Pg. 10 Long, Hot Days Of Saving Lives On The Fly U.S. Army medics, volunteers fight fatigue and shortages By Dana Hedgpeth In a hot, dimly lighted tent at University Hospital, in Haiti’s quake-stricken capital, a team made up of paramedics from Brooklyn, a doctor from California and a 22-year-old Army medic from Texas tugged at the bandages of a man who was screaming as the surgical wound on his left arm hemorrhaged. “Anyone have morphine?” someone yelled. Among the supplies on a rickety hutch in the corner was nothing to alleviate the Haitian’s pain. “Wait!” said Patrick Skinner, the medic from Dallas. “I’ve got a fentanyl lollipop!” Minutes after the painkiller was taped to his cheek, the man quieted down, and team members were able to cut off his bandages and stop the life-threatening bleeding. It took them an hour. On the hospital campus, a block from the collapsed presidential palace, scores of volunteer doctors, nurses and paramedics from Switzerland, Norway, Nicaragua, France, Taiwan, Canada and the United States have joined the local effort to care for injured Haitians. In the past week, they have performed amputations and treated fractures, infections, gunshot wounds and malnutrition. For Skinner and the dozen or so other U.S. military medics helping the volunteers, it has been a major learning experience. Many said they thought the work here would help prepare them to treat battlefield injuries. “I like getting my hands in on things,” said Skinner, 22, who is on his first deployment. “You look at pictures and you read, but you really don’t do it. Here, you’re right there with experienced doctors and see how they do things.” “You see it. You smell it,” he said. Over four days at University Hospital last week, Skinner helped with a Caesarean section and two amputations, administered dozens of IVs, cleaned and stitched up wounds, gave blood transfusions and changed countless dressings and bandages. He is here with the Army’s Global Response Force, which is assigned to deal quickly with natural disasters. Since arriving, his 82nd Airborne Division unit has helped transport patients to the USNS Comfort, delivered water and meals to Haitians, fed aid workers and guarded University Hospital so doctors and nurses could work. “Usually, we’re looking for the enemy,” said 1st Sgt. Kenneth Johnson, 38, of Spokane, Wash. “Here, we’re helping people and trying to figure out where we’ll put all the people who are coming in.” 16-hour workdays The U.S. military and the volunteer groups have turned the hospital campus, with its palm trees and purple-blooming bushes, into a scene of organized chaos. They have used a few of the salvageable buildings and set up tents — for triage, an ER, pre-op, post-surgery, maternity and pediatrics. Outside the post-surgery tent lies a mound of blood-soaked bandages and fly-ridden trash. Not far away, patients lie on stretchers in a concrete-floored tent, waiting for X-rays. The soldiers are camping in an old building that was used for hospice care, across from a collapsed nursing school with an estimated 100 bodies still inside. They can’t get the bodies out, the soldiers said, because they lack the heavy equipment needed. Skinner, a wiry man with thin, blond hair who participates in triathlons at home, wakes at 6 a.m. and helps tend patients until 10 p.m. He hasn’t showered in a week — just swabs himself with baby wipes. The medic, fluent in Portuguese, has picked up a few terms in Creole. In one tent, he explained to a woman who was writhing as doctors examined her leg that she was being given morphine. A few beds down, he helped a doctor clean a woman’s chest wound. The energetic medic has become a favorite with many of the volunteers. When he’s not checking on patients, he’s bringing the doctors leftovers from his ready-to-eat military meals — crackers, peanut butter, veggie burgers — because some have eaten little in the days they’ve been here. “You name it, and this guy does it,” said Jonathan Gates, a surgeon from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. ‘The worst thing’ The experience has also been tough. One patient died of an infection, another after an allergic reaction to morphine. Three babies have died. “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Sgt. 1st Class Haven Crecelius, 28, of Iowa, who has completed several deployments to Iraq. “Nobody’s shooting at us, but . . . ” his voice trailed off. He had worked almost 22 hours that day, after 75 patients came in overnight. One woman was paralyzed from the waist down; one kept having seizures five days after giving birth. “It is hard and sad,” he said. “You see kids who are malnourished. . . . I saw a 6-week-old who looked like a deformed dog, he was so tiny. It is overwhelming that people live like this.” Still, there is a sense of hope at the hospital. At one patient’s bed, friends and relatives held a church service and sang to her. For other Haitians, there is the chance to make money. Roody Jean, 28, makes $20 a day manning the doors. “It’s a job,” he said, holding up his face mask against the smells. “It’s better than nothing.” Skinner raced past Jean to help lift a woman with spinal-cord injuries out of the back seat of an arriving car. Then he checked in at the makeshift operating room to find out that a gunshot victim he had helped treat earlier was crashing. Hours later, he learned that the woman had died at a field hospital before she could get on a helicopter to the Comfort. That night, Skinner walked around the hospital campus with fellow medic Steven Cheaney, 21, of Merritt Island, Fla., chewed some beef jerky and smoked a cigarette to calm himself. Before returning to the military camp, he played with a 10-year-old boy who has taken up with the soldiers guarding a potable-water tank at night. The boy lost both his parents in the quake. After a few minutes, Skinner headed for bed, as Cheaney reminded him, “You can’t save the world in one day.” -From the Early Bird news, on AKO. Subscribe to Obsessed with Scrapbooking to learn more about ways to use the Cricut in your scrapbooking!
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Haitian Relief Effort - A Personal Connection
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