Photography by Scot Facer Proctor
Before the earthquake, nearly 1 in 10 people in Haiti suffered from disabilities or 800,000. Now, with new amputees, crushed limbs and other injuries from the quake, no one has counted the number. Perhaps no one can.
It is just at this moment of great need for rehabilitation work that one of Haiti’s premiere rehabilitation clinics, called Healing Hands for Haiti is reeling from its own earthquake wounds. Just when the need is greatest, the power to meet that need is sorely diminished.
All of the buildings, except a guest house, on the 4-1/2- acre campus were crushed or rendered dangerously unstable by the upheaval, leaving Dr. Jeff Randle, the LDS founder and former Haitian missionary dismayed.
When he came home from seeing the ruined clinic, the ruined country, he wrote in his blog, “I got home Sunday evening and I’m still exhausted. I haven’t been sleeping well. I turn a corner in my car and instinctively look for crumbled buildings. I look at my children and want to hug each one of them and cry. We were warned by the social workers on our trip that we would have a period of adjustment when we returned home. I didn’t think it would be me though. I am so used to going and coming from Haiti. But not this Haiti. Not the Haiti where everyone has a tale of sadness, of death of a loved one, or of a miraculous escape.”
He also added on his blog, however, a quote by Stanley Jones: “The most absolutely happy people of the world are those who choose to care till it hurts. The most miserable people of the world are those who center upon themselves and deliberately shun the cares of others in the interest of their own happiness. It eludes them. They save their lives and they lose them.”
It was because he cared until it hurt about the Haitians that after his mission he carried a long-term dream about helping the people he had come to love, and it is this same passion that means in the wake of this earthquake, Healing Hands will continue its work and build anew.
Healing Hands will continue to send teams of rehabilitation specialists beginning in March when 25 medical people are scheduled to come. Kate Walther, who is bringing the group, said they will particularly focus on working in orphanages that specialize in kids with disabilities and, in addition, perhaps work at local hospitals that are having staffing issues in rehab.
Original Vision Evolved
The original vision of the Utah Hospital Task force team, the 125 LDS volunteers who spent the last two weeks in Haiti, was to begin rebuilding a clinic for Healing Hands, but that goal evolved. Our construction crew assessed the damage from the earthquake and determined “nothing is ever again usable at the Healing Hands campus except the guesthouse.” Thus, the first task of the construction crew was to render the guesthouse habitable and secure the campus boundaries.
Securing boundaries is critical, because in this post-earthquake nightmare where there is any open land, people move in-and then will not be moved out again. Lisa Bagley, a Healing Hands founder, board member and RN, asked a local what would happen if they tried to move people out, who had squatted there, to set up their clinic again, and the answer was, “They will kill you.”
Even before the quake, plans had been developed for a spacious new clinic on the grounds, but now, every aspect of that will be re-evaluated as to its plan and precise location. What is not up for grabs is if a clinic will be built-and Healing Hands will redouble its efforts to raise money for the construction and is already mapping out strategies to rebuild.
Just as important was to restore care delivery at the facility. To that end, a Utah company donated a large field tent and the Healing Hands team, who came as part of the task force, immediately began seeing patients.
In the past, 45 people have worked at the Healing Hands facility, and some were still on hand to see the hundreds who lined up for both short-term and rehabilitation care in those first days when Healing Hands reopened for sometimes frustrating business from a tent.
Lisa said that computer and charts on the patients were destroyed, and, of course, the supplies for normal procedures have been upended.
One sunny morning last week, 22-year-old Charles Martineau, came for wound care. Her legs had several major wounds where a wall fell on her and she was unreachable for two days. She cannot feel one of her legs and to this point, it is unusable. With her injuries she struggles to care for her 18-month-old son.
Charles needs what Healing Hands has to offer-a long-term commitment to help her walk again. Without that, her life will be crippled.
Lisa worked with her, showing her exercises she must do to begin to strengthen her leg and explained, “Peripheral nerves repair very slowly. It will take her months of work to be able to walk again, but she can.”
Meanwhile, two of the Healing Hands Haitian staff were also working with her. Like most Haitians, they have their own wounds-only theirs are invisible. Jony St. Louis and Hervia Paul both lost their spouses in the trembler, and their wounds aren’t dressed and bandaged.
You can just see it in their eyes.
But those who mourn shall be comforted, and for both of them, helping others in desperate need at least takes their minds off of their grief for a few blessed minutes.
Jony St. Louis is a Latter-day Saint, whose wife Annia, had just graduated from medical school in Haiti, financed in part through the Church’s Perpetual Education Fund. She had just come home from work and a friend had taken their two children, so she could rest for a few minutes, when the earthquake fractured her building, and she died from her injuries sustained when the roof fell on her.
After he had joined the Church, Jony was called on a stake mission, and during one lesson on temple marriage, he flipped open the book, pointed emphatically at a picture of the Salt Lake temple and said, “”I guarantee I’ll be married there.” He and Annia were sealed there five years ago.
A Visit that Renewed
The twelve people in the task force who came from the U.S. especially slated to help at Healing Hands made all the difference. Lisa said that until they had come, the Haitian staff, drained and traumatized, had not yet even begun to sweep up the rubble.
Now the driveway has been cleared and Lisa has banded with other NGO’s, whose speciality is rehabilitation, to coordinate their efforts to meet the crisis. One of the goals of Healing Hands over the 12 years of its existence has been to provide prosthetics for those whose limbs have been amputated.
The machines that create those were not damaged in the quake, but the building they sat in was precarious and fissured.
The Utah Hospital Task Force were able to clear the driveway to allow trucks to come in from Handicap International and take the prosthetics manufacturing machines to another location so they will still be able to create artificial limbs, which are more needed than ever before.
Before the earthquake, as an introduction to the organization, Dr. Randle described what it took to form a thriving NGO in the harsh environment of Haiti. “From cutting up our beach chairs to make hand splints, to doing examinations in a the pitch black, to conducting a physical therapy clinic in a driving rainstorm as a giant tree cracks and falls narrowly missing two of our therapists, to going to customs and being told that it would cost $40,000 to have our container of medical supplies released (we had less than $4000 in the bank at the time) and returning each day and politely nagging until they got tired of us and released it without charging any duty – we have seen it all.”
As it turned out, they really hadn’t seen it all. The earth had an even bigger show for them.
Healing Hands for Haiti has been shaken, literally, by the quake, but according to R.N. Susan Bale, they are experts at rehabilitation-and what is that? It means taking someone who has had a severe injury and working with them over time so they can begin to enjoy life again.
Healing Hands has received a severe injury, but not a fatal blow. They are experts at rehabilitation. In the face of the harshest injury, a patient copes or he doesn’t cope.
Healing Hands for Haiti will more than cope.
Dr. Randle wrote, “I hope the world doesn’t turn its face away from Haiti. If it does, I don’t think Haiti will survive.”
Healing Hands is in there for the long haul.
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To help Healing Hands get back on its feet and continue to move forward in this most critical work in Haiti, please click here.