Liz's First Day of Surgery

Today was a busy day. I performed my first surgeries at the hospital at Jacmel. Our surgeons didn't get here in time yesterday to do any cases, so we had several today. Most people go to church, and the generator isn't turned on until after church, and we need the generator for the OR, so we didn't start until 11:30.

Our first case was a four month old who had a wound on his arm. He was pinned under rubble, his mother was killed and his father injured. He will probably have some long term damage to his hand.
During the procedure:

Postop:

We also had a patient with a hip dislocation, and one with a tibia fracture.Some things work great, some don't. We have a great anesthesia set up, but no real tourniquet for surgery. The team had to improvise a tourniquet for this patient:

In this procedure, the patient's hip is being treated:

after surgery, a patient is transported back to her bed:

We had a child come in hit by a motorcycle, there was some concern about a closed head injury or cspine injury but all we can do it evaluate clinically and get plain xrays.

We are trying to get several patients evacuated to Philly for treatment, but the logistics are complicated. People want copies of documents but there are no printers or copy machines.

Two people had to fly to Port au Prince today via blackhawk to get the papers stamped.

We are having a make shift superbowl party tonight!

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The link below is for Doctors United for Haiti which is the group I am working with.

From the home page, click on "Team Ange" to see a description of our activities and more pictures.

http://www.dufh.org/

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Many people have expressed their support for me.

Thank you all!

Please keep praying for us and for all those working to assist in Haiti!