Monday night... On one hand, it's hard to believe it's only Monday, the day has felt about a week long! On the other hand, it's hard to believe it's already Monday, because I have so much to try to accomplish before the end of the week. I woke up at 5:15am (yes...thanks to the donkey alarm) and joined one of the team members, Steve, on the roof top. Steve has worked with MTI and HFH for many years. He is an engineer and all around super-duper smarty pants. :) Steve is here with his wife, Joan (a women's health specialist) and her kids, and it is wonderful to see their whole family working together and individually on this trip. So, Steve and I hung out on the roof in the dark, and he pointed out all these constellations and planets that I rarely see in the states. He also has this cool phone app that tells him where roaming satellites are in the sky, so we found a couple of those, too. Eventually, the rest of the crew woke up, we had breakfast by 7:30 and were in the clinic, ready to roll by 8am. I need to back track a bit, to give you a little back story of my day. Last night, at the wrap up meeting, I discovered a few glitch's in the original plan for my role here. It was brought to my attention that the 2 individuals I was specifically sent here to work with, have no ultrasound experience...at all...none. Nada. They do not even know how to work the machines. I'm not sure how to explain my reaction to hearing this, except to say that I suddenly realized that I needed to figure out how to teach ultrasound physics, 2 years of specialized training and 3 1/2 years of scanning in 5 days...to people who don't speak English. (Did I mention I don't speak Haitian Creole??). Where do I start? How do I teach them Physics? What is most important? Isn't it ALL important?!? WHAT IF I CAN'T DO THIS?!?! Yea, that was last night. So, somewhere between last night and 8am this morning, I came up with a loose lesson plan, and I spent the first couple of hours teaching a Haitian Doctor and Haitian Midwife ultrasound physics and how to use the machines, with the help of an interpreter. I cannot begin to explain my gratitude for the incredible Haitian interpreters that we have here! The rest of my day was spent scanning patients and explaining everything to these three wonderful people. It's hard to describe the passion and thirst for knowledge the Haitian people have. I couldn't even consider what, and how, I'm planning to teach this week, if they didn't want to learn it. I spent most of my lunch break trying to come up with teaching aides, charts and information that I can leave with them when I go. Hopefully, this will give you some insight to my task at hand for the rest of the week. One of the first questions the Dr. asked me was "Will you keep teaching us when you come back?" :) The thought of disappointing these people makes my heart hurt! I scanned quite a few patients today, and have already begun to find my groove with the Triage mentality necessary to help so many people in such a short time. So many of our patients have walked all day and/or night it get to our clinic for treatment. It's very important to establish set hours (or we would all be seeing patients through the night), so tonight we have a number of patients who are spending the night in order to be seen tomorrow. The people have no food and little or no money to buy food, many have not eaten in days. They sleep in our classrooms, on a concrete floor, with only the scarce clothing on their backs. We have the most amazing group of women who cook our meals, and after they have cooked and served our dinner, they cook and serve food to the waiting patients in the class rooms. I will try to remember to tell you more later about the women who take care of us here, but this blog is already attempting to turn into the Great American Novel! We have already lost power once this evening, so I will sign off, attempt to post this, and return to the roof to watch shooting stars until I'm ready to nod off. Tomorrow is another day...with only 24 hours in it! Sleep well, everyone. Ox