2 Bluffs nurses saw Haiti's pain

COUNCIL BLUFFS — Two Mercy Hospital nurses spent a week in the Dominican Repub­lic treating victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Becky West and Michae­la Martin, both critical care nurses, returned Feb. 5 after the joint operation by Alegent Health and Creighton Univer­sity Medical Center. What they saw amazed them.

“They have nothing. They have the clothes on their back, and that's it,” West said. “They were thankful to be alive, they were thankful to be in a hospi­tal, they were grateful to have people caring for them.”

The hospital and neighbor­ing orphanage in the Domican Republic just across the Haitian border opened soon after the quake, in two vacant buildings far enough from the epicenter to have escaped major damage, West said. The first floor of the hospital had open sides, which allowed dust and other contami­nants to enter.

“People just kept going through surgery every two or three days,” West said. “It was as clean as they could make it, but it wasn't sterile like it would be here.”

The hospital also lacked heart monitors and other basic equip­ment, she said. Even two weeks after the earthquake, there were still a few patients who came into the hospital who had just been rescued from the rubble.

As a pediatric nurse on the night shift, West saw children with fractures, amputations and surface wounds. She also taught mothers about breast-feeding and baby care.

It “tugs at your heart” to see children with injuries, she said.

“You hate to see a child in pain,” she said. “I took care of kids the same age as my kids.”

Although there was only one amputation while West was there, workers were busy with follow-up treatment.

“A lot of the patients who were getting amputations were getting infections,” she said.

Many had to go back and have their incisions reopened so the wounds could be cleaned, she said.

The most the medical staff could give patients before pain­ful procedures was “conscious sedation,” which dulled the pain but did not put patients to sleep, West said.

“The limitation was, we didn't have a ventilator, so we couldn't do general anesthesia — we couldn't knock them out,” she said.

Three babies were born while West was there — twins and a baby by cesarean section, she said.

The makeshift hospital ac­commodates about 178 people at a time, but as many as 350 had been there immediately after the quake, West said. She was expected to care for about six patients at a time — again, fewer than nurses were han­dling right after the quake.

“You basically had time to give medicine, and that was about it,” she said. “We also shipped a lot out because we had very limited resources.”

Some were transferred to hospitals, primarily in Haiti, for advanced care, West said.

“One day we had helicopters, we sent 30 to 35 people out,” she said.

They were busy the entire week.

“It's a huge emotional roller coaster,” she said. “You go from almost crying because you hear the kids crying to hearing them sing and seeing family mem­bers helping and people helping people they don't know.”

She said after her shifts she would think back on what she experienced.

“When you cry is usually when you're done — when you're done with your shift and you go back and lie down and start to think about what hap­pened,” she said.

The Haitian people will con­tinue to need help, West said.

“What I really hope is that people don't forget,” she said. “They're going to need help in a year, in two years, in 10 years. If I can go back and help, I will.”

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