To Amputate or Not to Amputate

The stories of hope and courage here are plenty as you can imagine. Listening to the stories of those that were here on the ground right after the earthquake hit or shortly thereafter will stop you in your tracks. Aid workers and medical personnel that were a witness to the initial onslaught of acute traumatic injuiries I am sure will not soon forget this experience. Some of our Navy medical counterparts that have been to active combat have said what they saw here in terms of trauma and injuries in the initial aftermath surpasses what they saw in combat. The number of aputations both on ground and on board will bestow upon Haiti a new generation of folks in need of prosthetics. In the early days when the Comfort was docked in site of the port Haitians were nervous about coming aboard because they viewed it as the ship where you came and lost your limbs. One surgeon talking to a group of us about some of the early surgical procedures became teary eyed telling us that he would have people roll into the OR suite to have their limb aputated (or face certain death from infection and or gangrene) and they would beg via their translator to be left alone to die rather than face being sent back to Haiti without an arm or a leg. In Haiti, life is harsh, people work hard to survive and resources are limited. The availability of prosthetics is not a sure thing especially for little ones that will grow and change and require many different prosthetics throughout their lives. This new generation of amputees in Haiti will need some special care and services from the international aid community. To have lost so much - mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, houses, churches, schools - and in addition a part of yourself so vital to your survival in an austere environment such as Haiti is almost too much to ask...