Tents

Everywhere you look there are tents. On the grounds of the hospital their are large tents, personal size tents, huge tents, government tents, US Aid tents. I waked the grounds yesterday after working and it is amazing. All of the adult patients are in tents- long tents that are hot, lined with cots and no privacy. The children are in the hospital proper and there are about 120 of them- that is the capacity. You see them in the cribs all skinny with reddish hair which is a sign of malnutrition. This is not just from the events- it is long standing. I took donated baby clothes to the maternity ward. Those babies are so tiny. Yesterday I held one who was 2 days old and he weighed less than 4 lbs I am sure. Mom was taking him home but in the states we would have beefed him up a bit.  My travel partner was very busy. Pat is a pediatric endocrinologist who specializes in international adoption and has been on many third world trips working with kids with malnutrition and parasites. But yesterday he spent countless hours with an adult diabetic they could not get under control. The tent she is in is crowded and noisy and since she is very ill (in a diabetic coma) there are lots of staff near her. She recovered enough to pull out both IV's so that is progress of sorts.
I realized that I had turned a corner yesterday when I unwrapped a stump of a boy about 6 years old and thought "wow that looks great" It was beautifully healed and no longer need a dressing but I never thought that I would think a stump is beautiful. Fortunately he now goes to St Germaine behind the hospital for rehabilitation and prosthetic fitting. Amputations have become so common that a young man whose knee was severely injured by trampling crowds after the earthquake started crying when he heard he needed surgery. He just assumed he would lose his leg. But fortunately he can be repaired.