As was told to me . . .

Our co-worker Gary, an excellent Mental Health Tech at our hospital, had planned on going on a medical mission trip in February to the Dominican Republic where it borders Haiti. The team of five doctors, several nurses, and support people were to be stationed at a field hospital and from there help to set up some smaller clinics in the area. But when the earthquake hit in January, the focus consequently changed. I worked with Gary today and finally got to hear some of his story. At first he didn’t know what he would be called to do, but as it turned out, he helped them deal with the emotional trauma. He gave me permission to blog about it.

Gary’s team arrived about 6:30 one evening and he volunteered to get right into the action. With a nurse, he made rounds until very late on patients who were lying on mats in tents, holding the flashlight so the nurse could take care of wounds and change dressings. The next morning the Greenville team got organized, and he and a psychologist were paired and came to be called “Psychology.” They were preceded by a volunteer psychiatrist who stayed long enough to tell them how he had been helping the traumatized Haitians. Through an interpreter he would ask, “Do you remember the earthquake? Can you tell me what happened?” thereby getting the people to start processing what had they experienced.

The field hospital, operated much like a MASH unit, was only one part of a larger medical compound that was surrounded by a block wall with iron gates and protected by the Dominican military. Volunteer medical workers from several countries used the various facilities within the walls. The one permanent building/OR/ER was a two story block structure where surgeries were done. When stable enough, patients were taken outside and placed on the ground under tents where follow up care was given. People who had endured terrible tragedy and losses, as the news reported, kept being brought in for all kinds of help.

Gary and his partner would walk through the tents as the patients were getting their medical care and would hear, “Psychology, we need you!” and they would run to help. For sixteen hours a day, he listened to “heart wrenching” stories, and cried and prayed with the people. He said the stories were so horrible he had to pull away and regroup once in a while, but he said also that he saw people who were so grateful for what they did have left.

Most of the volunteers slept on mattresses on the ground with no covering. He said it was hot and the roosters crowed and the pigs snorted during the night, but he was so exhausted, he didn’t care. Rice, beans and chicken were the food staples. I think it was a life changing experience.