The sad day arrived today when Medical Teams International Team 15 headed for Port-au-Prince to get ready for early flights out tomorrow morning. There are great people on the new team also, but after living with folks for three straight weeks, they all become family and we’ll miss the old team very much.

Now that our numbers are down to a workable few, Dr. Stephane asked me to return to the clinic today as triage and intake person. So I bundled up my automatic blood pressure cuff and automatic thermometer and went to Cazal with the team. We held the clinic in a walled-in church which was great for crowd control, but had little ventilation. Our clothes were slick with sweat by midday. It was brutal. Trying to put the blood pressure cuff on wet arms and sit next to hundreds of sweaty bodies was not a pleasant experience.

Max was my interpreter today and he quickly picked up my instructions to the many people I find with high blood pressure about cutting back on salt and the use of Magi (bullion type cubes) which is loaded with salt and MSG.

There weren’t too many really sick people there today. We’re past the immediate disaster time of the earthquake now, and what we mostly see are ordinary walk-in clinic cases. But there’s always some that still have dramatic earthquake injuries. It’s still sad to see the limbless people walking on crutches. I’ll be glad when the prosthetic programs are up and running so they can get new legs and arms.

A young girl was brought into our clinic today that was a very sad case. She’d been born without a functioning rectum and doctors seven years ago had created a temporary one on her side. Unfortunately, the next phases of plastic surgery were never done and now her doctor has been killed in the earthquake. The hospital where he worked was destroyed.

We referred her to another hospital that is doing some reconstructive surgery. Hopefully she’ll get the help she needs.