Too broken, too little, too late

Field Journal
Christianville, Haiti

January 17, 2010

            “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?” Psalm 22:1

            Too broken, too little, too late. We had not been at the earthquake-destroyed Christianville clinic consulting injured people under the trees more than two hours, when a woman approached us with a one-year-old child in her arms. We found a gravely injured little child lapsing in an out of consciousness. Clinically, we diagnosed the likelihood of a fractured pelvis that had perforated the bladder or urethra and probably the bowel as well. The baby needed immediate IV resuscitation and emergency surgery.

This was now the fourth day after the earthquake and the baby had not passed urine since his rescue from under his crushed home. Even with surgery, the risk of death would be significant. The staff at the clinic was struggling just to survive and could not care for such a gravely ill child at that moment. All medical supplies were still in the destroyed clinic. We had just sent our truck back to the north for supplies and truck repair. We had no way to transport this baby with IV fluids to a surgical hospital. No one even knew for sure at that moment where a surgical hospital was in the area that was working. We had heard rumors that surgical hospitals were being set up around the Port-au-Prince airport, an hour or longer drive from us.

Here we had come to help as doctors and nurses and we had no way to help this little child. We prayed for him but were unable to help this child here at this moment. We had no surgical facility here. We shared with the woman (a relative, not his mother) what the child’s diagnosis and treatment needs were, and urged her to try immediately to find someone with a motorcycle to take her to the airport area to find a surgeon. We gave her a medical letter for the surgeon, if she could find one. As we watched her leave, our sinking hearts wondered if she would find her way to a hospital through the damaged city and the desperate crowds, or would she resign herself, give up and not even try, taking him back to the rubble called “home” to die?      

            Somehow, writing about this little child’s desperate plight consoles a bit the inner wounding of our helplessness, perhaps only in making him and all the other desperate and despairing un-helped little ones not be forgotten by us.

            “Sa ki vlé, pa ka fé. Sa ki ka fé, pa vlé.” (“Those who want to help, can’t. Those who could help, won’t.”) - Dr. William Hodges

            Oh, Lord, have mercy on us all!

In His merciful love,