"I have lost my ticket to complain about anything. Ever."

Makeshift shelters in downtown Port-Au-Prince

So my 'blog' is getting off to a slow start...but I am still determined to share stories of Haiti, little by little (poco a poco as they say in Spanish).

Last night I returned to my apartment to unpleasant chaos. My first thought was "how can people act like this when people are dying in Haiti?" Funny how everything seems to relate to Haiti since I returned. A few fellow members of the medical team at Heartline hospital, the last place I volunteered at, started a Google group to 'de-brief' from our experience. It has been much more difficult than I thought to adjust to 'normal' (is our lifestyle normal?) life. I have lately been overwhelmed by a feeling that I guess could be called exhaustion...not the indescribable fatigue that I felt after 10 days of working in Haiti at the field hospital and downtown at university/general hospital but more of an emotional exhaustion. A sense of unrest knowing that the suffering is so great in Haiti while I am here.

One of the helpful posts on our Google group related to explaining our experience after returning home. I remember thinking in Haiti "How will I ever describe what it was like being here? How can I explain the misery and devastation in words? How can I do justice to the stories of so many people I came across that were affected by the disaster?" One of my fellow volunteers commented that she is trying to suppress the need to 'have to have' people understand what it was like in Haiti, as they can't and won't. And that's ok. To borrow the phrases she has been using to explain her experience, it was completely life-changing (cliche but true). And my favorite: "I've lost my ticket to complain about anything. Ever."

The other part of the struggle for me is that I have an overwhelming desire, and also I think a responsibility, to share what I can of my experience to those who have not experienced Haiti. So, maybe this is wear this blog comes in, and the opportunities I had while at home to share a little of my experience here and here. I just hope that with my words I have given and can give my time in Haiti, and more importantly the beautiful people, justice.

Back in the 313

My bed at the field hospital

When I woke up this morning, I thought I was still in Haiti. Over the past few weeks, I have slept in so many different places, from a community tent on an army cot to a convent to a garden outside the rubble, that the darkness of the morning (it has been hard to sleep past 7 a.m.) always confuses me. It feels strange to be back in Detroit. The images from Haiti are still so vivid in my mind, for which I am glad: I don't want to forget.

When I got out of bed, I turned on the news, hoping for an update on Haiti. Instead, I was greeted with clips from the Olympics (I have been told I look like the ice dancer Tessa Virtue, weird that I just found out who she was this morning when figure skating used to be such a big deal to me) and various news clips including the missing "Growing Pains" actor and a teenager that ran away in Mexico. It seems cruel and disheartening that much of the suffering in Haiti could have been forgotten so soon...

After my return home, I found this clip ER-Haiti detailing the field hospital in Haiti where I worked my first 10 days. It offers a glimpse into the current situation in Haiti: the limited resources and harsh conditions, the difficulty of transferring patients to facilities in the U.S. for needed care, the broad scope of illnesses and injuries and the difficult mix of first world and third world medicine. I have been thinking a lot about the current medical team at the UMiami field hospital: do they have the capacity for any more labs? more units of blood in fridge? any possibility of obtaining a CT scanner? are they still seeing as much trauma? is the ER still leaking rain from the tent roof? Watching that clip and seeing our "ER" tent, army cots and medical team enjoying MREs (meals-ready-to-eat) makes me feel like I am back in Haiti.

More later...

Haiti mon amour...

I just got back from Haiti, and amidst the rubble of Port Au Prince, there are countless stories that need to be told...stories of courage, suffering, hope and resilience. I felt that I have a responsibility to share some of them as well as my experience there, in the hope that we (myself included) will not forget the misery that is reality right now for our fellow men and women, boys and girls in Haiti.

I remember thinking over and over while I was working in Haiti that words or pictures could never do justice to what I was experiencing and seeing. However, I hope that by "blogging" I can paint a picture of what it is like in Haiti right now and tell some of the stories that shouldn't be left untold...