Haitian Doctors and Nurses Don’t Cry--May 2020

 

Haitian toddler with submental abscess…she has no local doctor or clinic to provide care. (May 19, 2020)

I recently listened to an audio recording of an American doctor from the east coast who described taking care of an 80-year-old lady with Covid-19. She explained how the patient took a turn for the worse one morning, and the decision was made not to intubate her because most elderly patients with Covid-19 never come off the ventilator. 

After this decision was made, the physician hurriedly called the lady’s daughter who took the news well but did ask if her mother could receive last rights. The doctor agreed. 

After repeated attempts by the healthcare team to find a Catholic priest, the family parish priest showed up and gave a quick version of the last rights to the patient.  While this important sacrament was being given, the lady’s daughter was watching as she looked in through a hospital window while standing in a cold rain. 

The story is moving but so is the doctor’s verbal account as she told this story through her own tears. She was very sorry to lose this old lady especially under these mean circumstances of people dying without family members present at the bedside. 

While working in Haiti during the past four decades, I have experienced many people’s deaths, but I have never seen a Haitian doctor or nurse cry. I have seen family members sob and drop to the ground in distress, but doctors and nurses seem oblivious to the pain and suffering that surrounds them all the time.

I clearly remember a young mother in Soleil who was standing over her hospitalized infant in a metal crib. She was quietly crying as she watched her baby slipping away from meningitis. Another lady walked over to her from the crowded ward and told her not to cry. And she firmly added, “Don’t you see we all have sick children?” The young mother quickly wiped her eyes and quit crying. 

During the cholera years, more than 10,000 Haitians lost their lives to the relentless cholera bacteria that wreaked havoc on Haiti. Haitian physicians and nurses were surrounded by hundreds of people in shock in Cholera Treatment Centers, and to lose a patient now and then was not unusual. 

Haitians are used to being hungry, to having wounds that won’t heal, to having diabetes that goes without insulin, to having sickle cell pain crises without proper analgesics, and to having major vehicular accidents on Haiti’s dangerous highways with no adequate EMS. And now with Covid-19, Haitians not only fear and suffer from the virus, but they fear and suffer from their neighbors who may turn against them if they have Covid-19 signs and symptoms. There seems to be an infinite number of ways Haitians may suffer. 

And Haitian doctors and nurses are used to caring for these patients when they show up. But every time “something goes south” with the patient, Haiti’s health care providers don’t have the luxury of time to mourn their loss. 

 

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org

4 thoughts on “Haitian Doctors and Nurses Don’t Cry”

1. Anonymous

2. says:

3. May 19, 2020 at 3:38 pm
   Sad. Very, very sad.
   Reply

4. Deborah Lammert

5. says:

6. May 19, 2020 at 4:04 pm
   I’m not sure that it is always, or even usually, because they “don’t have time”. I’ve seen many simply on their phones watching U-tube videos, talking to friends, sometimes even making fun of those in emotional distress. It seems to be quite different if it is a relative or friend; those persons often rate much more attention. Is it apathy due to the common loss of life? Is it self-centeredness? Is it survival? The 10-15% that do seem to really care are often ostracized, or the very least, not supported by colleagues. Please, help me to understand.
   Reply

1. Ryan Heneise

2. says:

3. May 20, 2020 at 7:16 am
   Deborah, it’s easy to become hardened to the suffering of others when suffering is everywhere. In the US we rarely suffer. And so, when we do experience suffering, it is poignant. In Haiti suffering is everywhere, and so one can become desensitized to it. Like the woman in the slum who said “don’t you see we all have sick children”, expressing sorrow is seen as selfish and indulgent. What gives you the right to cry over your sick baby, don’t you see my baby is sick also? What is lacking is an understanding any the meaning and value in suffering; that suffering can be redemptive and draw us closer to Christ (this is lacking in our culture also). I have seen Haitian doctors who truly care, and I know people who have found Christ through suffering.
   Reply