Day 14: Never a Boring Day

Sunday was an eventful day.  I was working in Triage that morning and things had been pretty slow.  Then, around 10:00, a truck raced up with a badly injured 13-year-old American boy.  He had been in an ATV accident and obviously had major head trauma.  When I got to the truck he was minimally responsive with blood coming out of both of his ears.  His mother, a pediatrician, was down in Haiti for the week volunteering at a clinic.  The staff at the clinic knew that Medishare is the only facility with a CT scanner, so they rushed him here. We got him into our ED and began to assess and stabilize him.  He clearly needed a head CT, but since it was the weekend, our CT scanner wasn't up and running.  But a technician was able to be called in, and after the power initially went out, the generators starting working and the scan was able to be completed.  The CT revealed multiple skull fractures.  But since, the patient was stable and he didn't require any immediate neurosurgical intervention, the staff at Medishare was able to get him med evaced back to a hospital in Fort Lauderdale.  Sammie and I transported the boy on the ambulance ride from the hospital to the airport.  It was kind of cool getting to ride right onto the runway. The pilots and medics that were transporting the patient back to the States were fabulous.  They even brought us some special treats.  We definitely enjoyed our Dunkin Donuts flown in from America :)  Overall, I was very impressed with how well everybody worked together to provide this boy with such exceptional care in less than ideal circumstances.  The fact that he made it to the hospital, was stabilized, got scanned, and was already on a plane back home in less than eight hours from the time of his initial injury is amazing.  Project Medishare did an awesome job!