Last night was hot and humid. sleep did not come easily as the generator was on till 5 am. Some artists were busy painting sign for Ted's fuel relief effort. when the generator finally went off, the rooster's crowing could be heard. I got up then to venture out in the streets for my run.
A word about Ted's fuel relief effort, he runs a non-profit organization that delivers free fuel to disaster areas to enable the delivery of food, shelter and water possible and to also allow NGO's and non-NGOS to continue to function during period of fuel shortages since generators need fuel to run. This is no small contribution! His website is www.fuelrelieffund.org.
Gale and Kerline decided that we should have a clinic in Bon Repos where we were staying. We set up a temporary clinic in the warehouse next to Kerline's house with some sheets rigged up in a corner for privacy. Susie and I saw patients while Jenn and Kerline did the triaging.
Even before we were ready, there were already patients waiting. My first patient was Samuel, a 16-year-old man who was hit in the left eye by a block. He was seen by Search and Rescue and received a cut in the upper eyelid and on the left cheek. I was the second medical person that he was seeing. When the dressing was removed, he had a lot of pus oozing from his eye, a lot of swelling and his vision was blurry. I was afraid that he also sustained a facial fracture that trapped one of his eye muscles. I removed his stitches and irrigated his eye as best I could, the lack of equipment made this job harder. I asked him to come back to Kerline's house every day for me to change his dressing and check on his vision. There was a man with a gangrenous fifth digit and we sent him to a hospital, a woman with a broken collar bone and anther with a broken tibia in a cast and she ran out of pain medications. Eventually we had to turn away some patients.
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