Guerline (Thoughts on Haiti)--October 2015

She looked like a rag doll in Jacmel. We entered from her back door and saw her profile as she sat on a wicker chair staring out her front door.

Guerline was tall and had on a long blue skirt. She had a beautiful and childlike face. She was 16 years old but her rheumatic heart valves had turned her into an old lady. She was fairly immobile due to lack of oxygen to supply her needs. 

I took Guerline into the city and made her sleep on a roof for a week while we worked on her passport and visa to come to the States for heart surgery. (She insisted on washing the dishes at night until I would forcefully put her back in a chair for her to observe and nothing more.)

She made it through surgery well. In CVICU with staples and wires holding her sternum together and with a temporary pacemaker, a chest tube, a foley catheter, and numerous IV’s in her big veins and small arteries, she looked up at me and said: 

“Dr. John, please don’t ever send me back to Haiti.”

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org