Haiti is Hard

Today is one of those days that I am very happy I decided to blog. We all have had those days in our lives where we are quite certain that nobody else would understand what we are experiencing, no matter how hard we try to explain it. Medicine is an interesting field. It's a unique career in that you don't just study how to do medicine, but you become it. You learn a different language, work an unhealthy amount of hours, and see and do things that others would never imagine or want to do. I love when Haitians ask me if I am a doctor, not because I want to play doctor while I am down here, but because in French they put it so clearly. "Vous etes medicin?" Which means "You are a doctor?" But because they often leave the pronoun out before medicin, to me it sounds like "You are medicine?" Because it's true, you don't just practice medicine, you become it. You leave the normal social world that the rest of the human race lives in and you transform. I really feel that Haiti in many ways is similar to medicine. Until you experience it for yourself, until you leave the social infrastructure and comforts of the developed world, you never really understand it. Just like I realize now that I never really understood medicine until I have started to become it.

A wise doctor once told me that "Haiti is hard." For those who maybe hear stories from Haiti, visit it for a couple of days, etc. they often think that means Haiti is sad. But it's more than that. Haiti, like medicine, is complicated, and I am writing this blog post because I know that there are only a few select people (who have worked in both medicine and Haiti) that really understand. I am not saying others don't care when I am having a bad day, it's just different. Because while they care and love me, they don't live in this unique world of Haiti and medicine that I do, and so it's hard to explain to them what today was really like.

Today was a the perfect example of how "Haiti is hard." Today marked the exact half point of my stay here in Haiti. And today I think I almost lost my marbles. Today I fed Baby Joseph his morning bottle, only instead of a normal baby bottle the nurses insisted I use a sippy cup (yes a plastic sippy cup for a baby the size of a newborn) because it was easier to clean and more sanitary. Needless to say he almost choked multiple times, couldn't control how much he was intaking, and then proceeded to vomit all of the contents up on me. Today we weighed Baby Joseph and I found out he has gained less than half a pound in the last week and half (hmm I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that he's not eating well because we are feeding him out of a sippy cup). Today the mom showed me the "clean water" Baby Joseph's dad brought to give him in addition to the hospital's special formula... he had put it in a dirty plastic jug (hello infection!). Today I had zero success at buying Baby's Joseph's mom food and new clean water at the market because the Haitians there immediately saw me as a blan who would pay 6 times the normal price for something (no I am not going to pay $2 US for a piece of bread!) Today when another mom saw me buy Baby Joseph's medicine she told me her and her sick, malnourished daughter's story... I only have so much cash on me to last my entire stay here so I had to look the adorable little 2 year old in the eye and tell her sorry but there's nothing I can do, I am just one blan and I don't hold all the money or the answers. If it were up to me the government/ MSPP would let all little girls like this woman's have access to free healthcare, but today I am not in charge and I don't make the rules.

Tonight when a NGO group came over to the house for dinner they asked me how my day at the hospital was. I said it wasn't good and started telling them about Baby Joseph. But I gave them the spark notes version, because they started giving me that pity look and I don't want pity. Neither does Baby Joseph... or the other sick little kids and babies in the malnourished section of the pediatric unit. They want solutions. I couldn't effectively explain to the other blan tonight that I am not an unfeeling person. But Haiti is hard and so there are days when we send patients home to die of very curable things or tell little sick malnourished kids, sorry nothing I can do. We shrug, sigh or laugh inappropriately and move onto the next patient. Not because we don't care, but because if we cried over every tough thing we saw here, the Haitian doctors and I would never get any real work done. Because like explaining and being medicine, explaining and also being present in, really truly experiencing Haiti, is hard.