Day 7 & 8: I was unable to write in the last night at the house because we were so busy and then I've been in a bit of a sleep deprived time warp since then so I am finally sitting down to write about the last of the adventure. The last full day was Friday and we spent the morning at the hospital. With everything that had come up and occurred during the week we had not spent as much time there with the students and midwives as we had planned. We also focused on completing the supplies project. We wanted everything cleaned and labeled and organized but also for the Haitian midwives to understand their role in making the new system work. I was able to do an in-service teaching with all the midwives, student midwives and the nursing staff and students as well. They were very receptive and asked good questions. They were all very interested in the hemorrhage, eclampsia (hypertension) and neonatal resuscitation emergency bins we created. I spent time with them explaining that it was each of their responsibilities to be prepared and to be confident and competent in the care they were providing and that these bins would make their jobs easier. They understood that they would need to check each of these three bins at the start of their shifts to make sure each one was complete. If someone in the shift before them borrowed a medication or an IV start kit and they assumed it was in the bin their patient could die in the time it took to replace the item. As we were working on these concepts women were in labor all around us. It was a busy day on the unit and the universal sounds of labor filled the air. Women moaned and swayed their hips and squatted. It was nice to see that some of the labor techniques like sacral pressure and standing and squatting at the bedside and hip circles were being encouraged by the midwives and students on this day. They had carried over some of the lessons from earlier in the week allowing me to leave the hospital with a sense of hope.
One of the brothers, Brother Harry, was getting ready to celebrate his 84th birthday. He had been at the orphanage since 1983. He reminded me so much of my Poppa. He had little ones come up to him and hug him all night and during the movie he had one little boy on his lap and one tucked under each arm. I could not even begin to comprehend the number of lives he has impacted. So many children have been cared for by him over the years and he still had so much love to give. We moved up to the porch to have a drink with the 2 of the 3 full time brothers, a visiting brother and a man who was visiting from Georgia with his 17 year old son. The man from Georgia was a business man who wanted to donate money from his business to some cause and found this orphanage on the internet. He had been donating for 5 years and wanted finally come down and see it and share the experience with his son. Amazing people and stories through out our journey.
We finally boarded our plane and the flight was quick to Miami. The airport is so big and it took forever to get through customs and immigration. Then we had to recheck our bags and Pam was flying on a different airline so we had to walk a great distance to get her bags checked in. We thought we would have time to sit down and have a nice meal before we had to part ways but everything took so long I had to run to my gate.