Some rays of hope amid Haiti's devastation - Feature

Aboard the USNS Comfort - For all of the tragedy that has surrounded the crisis in Haiti, the image of tens of thousands of dead bodies in the streets, the capital city of a devastated country lying in ruins, there have been some happy endings. Take the case of Jean Beline, a 21-year-old woman from Port-au-Prince, who was resting on the USNS Comfort, a US Navy hospital ship floating just a short helicopter flight off the Haitian coast. She told a reporter visiting her Friday that she walked out of her house just before the January 12 earthquake struck based on "premonition."

She stood outside and watched as her home came crashing down. Beline, who was nearing the end of her pregnancy, was eventually evacuated to the USS Carl Vinson, massive aircraft carrier which reached Haiti vicinity before the Comfort.

She gave birth to a baby boy five days after the earthquake and decided to name him Vinson, but not just because of the special significance of the ship serving as her son's birthplace.

"I liked the name Vinson," she said through a translator.

The Comfort arrived in Haiti a couple days ago after departing from its home port in Baltimore, Maryland. The 1,000-bed vessel carries state of the art medical equipment and a landing pad for helicopter transports. It is one of two US Navy ships designed to provide medical care from the sea.

The Comfort's presence is one of many medical responses underway. International organizations like Doctors Without Borders are on the ground, along with the United Nations and teams from several other countries. Israel has been widely credited for quickly setting up a highly advanced hospital on Haitian soil.

Doctors and nurses were scurrying around with intense focus on the Comfort's initial treatment section, where patients are brought based on initial assessments by a team inside Haiti. At the staging area doctors decide who must go into surgery. Others are treated in the center and sent to one of the four floors below for recovery.

The ship is equipped with 12 operation rooms and an intensive care unit. So far, two Haitians have died on the ship, Commander Bob Fetherson, the surgeon who heads the operations unit, said.

Just steps away from Fetherson lies a 9-year-old girl with burns down her right leg. He said the girl will be treated before being flown to burn center in Puerto Rico.

Fetherson said the ugliest injury he has seen so far was a compound break of a women's thigh bone. The end of of the bone which attaches to the knee, protruded through the back of her leg. Doctors repaired it with still plates and screws and she was resting in intensive care. Without the treatment, the woman would have surely died, he said.

Compound fractures have been the main reason countless Haitians had to undergo limb amputations. Trapped under the rubble for days, the wound grows infected and the only way to save the patient is to remove the limb.

In just two days, doctors on the comfort have performed about 20 amputations, "too many," Fetherson said. Doctors in Haiti have spoken of hundreds of amputations in the days following the quake.

But with the more help arriving, people who would have otherwise died are now being saved, including victims of the series of aftershocks that continue to rock the weary nation.

Fetherson acknowledged he sometimes struggles to keep his emotions in check, saying that the state of so many of his patients is among the worst he has ever seen.

He treated a young man who had already been amputated from below the elbow on his right arm, and below the knee of his right leg. He spoke perfect English and aspired to be an engineer. Fetherson said he the encouraged his 21-year-old patient not give up on his dreams.

That was when he could no longer keep the tears back, reminding himself the boy was same age as his daughter. He walked over to a sink to wash his face, a method he says uses to get through the emotions and regain his focus.

Downstairs in the pediatric ward, dozens of children lie in beds, recovering from treatment. Like most earthquake victims, they sustained fractures. One nurse dubbed the facility "babies and broken bones."

Forty per cent of those brought to the Comfort are children. A 5-year-old girl was crying for her mother as nurses wrapped her left leg in a cast to immobilize her broken femur.

A lot of the children are missing their parents, who could not come because there is no space on helicopters for those uninjured, but others were simply scared, like any child visiting a doctor.

"You have to remember that some of these children have never seen a doctor," said Lieutenant Commander Dan Dawrora, who oversees the triage. Dawrora is constantly interrupted while talking to reporters, responding to more urgent requests from his staff.

Ensign Shannon Walker, a nurse in the children's ward, said they communicate with the parents through mobile phones, providing them with updates on the status of their children.

Since the Comfort arrived, more than 200 patients have been ferried to the ship, Dawrora said. About half of them arrive with injuries that if untreated could lead to fatal problems within days.

None of the patients brought to the Comfort have recovered well enough yet to be discharged and ferried back. But it appears the ship's doctors and nurses are winning more battles than they are losing.

"We focus on the ones we can save, we mourn the ones we can't," Dawrora said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/305328,some-rays-of-hope-amid-haitis-devastation--feature.html.