It has been so good to be back home in Haiti!! Although, it was nice to be back in Michigan.
The weather in Michigan was great, camp was a lot of fun, and it was good to catch up with friends and family.
But it was time to come back to the kids!
It has been a busy start back but thankfully not as crazy as some of my other returns. I saw 12 patients my first day back — including this little angel.
Little Cenelson
Cenelson was a week old and had a hematoma (goose egg) on his head from hopefully a traumatic birth and not from being dropped. They assured me that he had not been.
He seemed to be doing very well, but I'll follow up with him soon to be sure it’s going away, and to check for other problems.
Within a couple days upon my return I was actually able to get everything unpacked get my room reorganized and put away all the things in the school clinic I'd brought. It was nice to get everything in order before really jumping in — unlike my return after Christmas where I didn’t even get my suitcases emptied for eight days.
I was ready to get to the medical clinic Monday morning. There were a lot of patients when I arrived.
A few of them had been waiting for my return. Including Adriana. She had been seen at the clinic the week before. She has some birth defects and also appeared to have possible had a stroke.
Assessing Adriana
I don’t think she has had a stroke but she has significant defect to her ears. It appears that she has openings to the inner ear but still may have an ear drums and be able to hear some.
We are looking into her birth defect to see what other issues she may have. She was very cute and very happy though.
I'm hoping for a good life for this child, but she will probably always keep her ears covered to prevent the stigmatism of her "disability." In Haiti, it's often believed that a birth defect is from evil in the parents before the child is born.
Toward the end of my day at the clinic I got a call from HERO. They said there was a 40-hour-old a neonate patient — and the baby was crashing.
They needed help stabilizing the child until a medivac to the U.S. could be arranged. HERO picked me up from the clinic and we both responded to a small maternity hospital.
Just before our arrival a doctor and respiratory therapist from the hospital arrived and we all worked together to get the child stabilized.
Sometimes it takes a team effort
We transported the baby to a NICU to be cared for as the details were worked out. Then he was transport to the airport for a flight to Miami.
Fortunately, the child's family had access to some healthcare. The baby had some birth defects, was born at home, and he would have died if we'd waited just an hour longer to care for him. Unfortunately this is the exception and not the norm in Haiti.
Tuesday morning was malnutrition clinic.
The day before, I joked with the others that it seemed Meredith was seeing more kids than me. Well we made up for that! On Tuesday we saw 52 babies/kids!
We had several kids who were very sick.
We had to work with many moms and encourage them to nurse their babies instead of trying to get them on formula.
One of the little girls in the program is doing very well! She knows that she is doing better, is feeling better, and is much happier than when she started!
She walked around the clinic giving all the staff a fist bump then she would put her hand over her heart.
It was very cute and probably taught to her by a teenager, but I think was also very genuine that she appreciated what we were able to do for her.
It was such an encouragement to see good results from our work! They say that a truly malnourished child will not smile, and it's true.
Full of spunk without malnutrition!
One of the kids that we saw Tuesday in clinic was little Tabitha.
She is 11 months old and was very dehydrated and sick. It’s hard to get mommas to understand how important water is.
Tabitha seems to have special needs and we were only able to get a little bit of Pedilyte into her. She was so dehydrated that I was unable to get an IV started.
She cried and cried but was unable to make any tears.
We finally decided that she needed to go to the hospital for further care.
Tabitha at the hospital doing better after a couple days
Please pray that her momma will now understand the importance of giving her enough to drink.
On a good note, Davernile was at the same hospital so I also got to see her. She was doing much better and was going to be discharged that day to go back to the malnutrition center to be cared for!
On a trip to the ravine with the baby feeders I ran into my little friend Naisha and her momma. It was good to see them and know that she was still doing well. They are the ones we saved there lives when she was found with Preeclampsia back in May.
This could be a week with a few firsts for me!
Just as I was setting down to start this post, something ran into my room.
It only took a second to know what hit the building and the hair on the back of my neck stood up as I went outside and waited for more.
At 4:14 Saturday we had a 4.3 magnitude earthquake just North East of Port-au-Prince.
It was not what I expected my first earthquake to be like, but now I have experienced one. As of yet I have not heard any reports of damage or injuries. But, we may not be as fortunate with Hurricane Irma. I have never been in a Hurricane either. It is still a ways out but some of the track predictions bring a pretty powerful Irma right across Haiti. Haiti really doesn’t need any more problems right now.
Please Pray for the kids I have shared about in this post. And for all the children I have and will continue to come in contact with.
Please also pray for Haiti that this hurricane would not make a direct hit and that there will be no lives lost.
I continued to be humbled by your support and encouragement for the ministry of Kelby’s Kids!
It’s a blessing to be the one who can touch these kids with the loving kindness of your faithful financial sacrifice. I hope you know that together we are making a difference, saving lives, and providing a brighter tomorrow to many kids.
Until no child dies,
Kelby