It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times

Late post started 5/16/11 

It is 4am and we are still up.  That beginning alone should alert you as to the type of night that we are having.

The Best of Times: 

This past week has been a week full of celebrations. PULSE (Pediatric Universal Life Saving Effort) was here to provide a four day training course for the nurses and physicians at the Adventist hospital and the General hospital here in Haiti.  By the end of the training several of us were certified as BLS (Basic Life Support) instructors, PALS (Pediatric Advanced Life Support) instructors and PEARS (Pediatric Emergency Assessment Recognition and Stabilization) instructors, the others were certified as providers.  PULSE also donated several manikins to our training department so that we would be able to hold courses here at the Adventist hospital in Haiti, in addition they donated supplies for our NICU and Peds unit.  Needless to say I was speechless with joy (speechless is not something I do very well, ha ha).

This week we also celebrated the birthday of one of our local awesome docs, Spendie.  On Thursday we celebrated the birthday of Lynn our orthopedic coordinator, on Friday we celebrated Brian's birthday (a few day's earlier but hey), and today we finished the week at the beach for nurses appreciation week and the actual celebration of Brian's B-day... I told you there were a lot of celebrations.  Ok, back to the story.  It was an awesome fun relaxing day at the beach... then the fun ended.

The WORST of times: 

On our way back from the beach we came upon an accident.  We stopped to see if we could help but not much could be done.  Three people were dead on the road, another was in the ambulance with a head wound and several more were transported to a nearby hospital. I have seen death before, but I was not prepared for what we saw.  For some of the others in the car it was the first time that they saw death ( I pray that the image does not stay in their head).

Later that evening an orthopedic surgery a patient threw a pulmonary embolism, fortunate it was a small one.  He was started on anti-coagulation therapy and is doing well.

A few hours later a three day old infant in our NICU began having respiratory difficulty.  She is stable now...

Sorry for the brevity of the post, but as I started it at 4 am and we are still up... I am going to bed... ops.. I meant I was going to bed, just got a call off to NICU

Later.