Senator Bill Frist has been regularly corresponding with us about what he’s seeing on the ground in Haiti. He’s also blogging about his experiences at BillFrist.com and HopeThroughHealingHands.org. You can read his previous posts here, here, and here.
We got to bed late last night after ward surgery – sleeping 14 people in a house on the hospital grounds. Early this morning, we were awakened to violent shaking. It seemed to last a minute, but probably only 15 seconds or so. It felt like someone was shaking me to wake up. Within seconds, hundreds of people throughout the hospital were wailing. The memories of the loss of children and crushing buildings are still so raw for those suffering already, this aftershock was a grim reminder of the pain and suffering they’ve been through over the past week. With a single aftershock, things settled down after an hour. No one is hurt here, but it is still psychologically damaging, and those wounds will take much longer to heal.
We met in house on compound as a medical team; there are 15 of us. Nurses presented plans for assigning responsibility. One nurse is overseeing wounds, another all meds. The departing Ecuadorian rapid response surgical and medical team briefed everyone else on what they would see as next phase. Then we discussed among ourselves the best combination of antibiotics, dependent in part on what supplies we have. We have enough supplies for 2 to 3 days, but more is on the way so no reason to overconserve.
