Another patient story

This story began the first medical day.  Drs. Steve and Kelly were to be the emergency team for the clinic at Mission of Hope.  We had come on a week when they had not planned a medical team.  Raquel the nurse was in her first week at the Mission and she is in charge of the mobile clinic that takes teams into villages where they see and treat whoever comes.(See Steve's story)  The MOH Clinic is run by Haitians and they were kind enough to use these two energetic doctors for two days.  The first day Gay and I spent time in the Mobile clinic supply room sorting the supplies that the teams had brought. It provided us with lots of helpful info that we used to assist the Doctors in the days to come. 

While in the storeroom we could hear the cries of a baby and soon realized it was our docs generating the distress!  A Mom had brought in her baby boy with abscesses on his face.  Dr Kelly a surgeon was looking for a way to open the abscess when it began to spontaneously drain all over Dr Steve.  This was the beginning of the story of this dear family.  The baby was much relieved and the process of healing began.  The next day Dr Wilkerson asked Dr Steve to see a man whose hand he had previously treated.  By then Dr Steve had asked for HELP from me and I was grateful to be out seeing people.  We began by soaking the bandages off,  a horrifyingly painful process for the man.  Through the interpreter Daniel we began to hear his story.  The man owned a house and wanted to evict the man who was staying in the house.  The man would not leave so August was forced to bring in the police to evict the man.  In this process the man became angry and put a HEX on August.  During the cleaning of the home August had injured his hand and he believed the Voodoo hex that had been put on him caused the hand not to heal.  We had learned that even though many of the people of Haiti are Christian 95% of them also hold Voodoo beliefs.  Now we were hearing just what we had read about.  We also found out that the baby treated the day before was his baby--thus the source of infection.  After Dr Steve had the dressing off the hand and saw the extent of the injury/infection he realized Dr Kelly (an orthopedist) was much better equipped to see this and work on it.  They switched patients at that point.  Great teamwork as Steve then saw a man with a headache(more internal medicine).  This was a very extensive injury and Dr Kelly said usually caused by an untreated puncture injury.  He was treated and  Dr Kelly and Franz the interpreter also prayed with him.  I had been reading some Psalms 46 and 91 to expand my trust in God and shared these Psalms with the patient.  The patient August returned to the clinic on Friday.  Dr Steve was able to get some antibiotics for him as well as dial soap useful in  Staph infections.  He was excited to pray again with us and introduced his wife Naomi.  We look forward to seeing them again. 

Gay(Dr Kellys wife) was always a great encourager with patients

Linda in the mobile clinic supply room with all the new supplies.

The doctors and Franz and Daniel interpreters

One of the clinic rooms with nurse Raquel

When Dr Kelly shared this story in or presentation he was greatly moved as he told how much this young man had suffered. As he walked through the pain,  he(August) cried out for help from Jesus our true source of help.