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I'm already back at my desk working today. Thankfully, I've been scheduled for some training over the next 2 days which means I can pace myself to get going up to full speed again.

Part of this trip for me has been actively trying to engage others in the experience. My extravert personality also makes me live through things by sharing them with others, so I've been soliciting conversations and questions from everyone. This also helps me remember things and potentially get different perspectives on the experience.

Some people have asked me some good questions since I've gotten back. I think mostly they've asked open ended questions and I've had to say "The trip was a lot of things, good, bad, painful, rejuvenating." Someone asked if I would do it again and I immediately said YES. I am even sort of trying to figure out how I could go back next month.

I will say that it occurred to me that on other volunteer trips and mission trips I've been on, you deal with a lot of rejection, sometimes boredom, sometimes wondering if what you are doing is actually making a difference or even the right thing - but I don't really think I experienced that at all on this trip. We didn't have time for that. It’s a rare feeling to come out of something feeling so needed . . . . If I'm feeling any kind of difficulty adjusting back it’s because the things I'm doing are so much less urgent here than they were last week.

Some have asked me if I witnessed outbreaks of epidemics. The good news is that after reflecting about it, I don't really think we treated any patients for things like Dysentery or Cholera - others on the trip may remember differently. The bad news is that there was some concern about Tuberculosis but that is often a problem in Haiti. We did see several AIDs patients. Reports of incidences of Malaria are statistically more common than before the earthquake. Also many of the more common diseases have similar symptoms so in one consultation it’s hard to determine what the problem actually is.

To me this means that people are probably getting mostly good water, so at least some of the concerns about massive epidemics wiping out more people than the earthquake have not materialized. Complaints about Diarrhea and trouble breathing were common and can probably be related to uninfected but poor food and water supplies as well as a very large quantity of dust in the air from all the rubble. Several women also reported that they weren't going through their monthly cycle but failed pregnancy tests which could be due to stress and other factors. After explaining this to my wife, she remembered firsthand accounts of WWII concentration camps that reported that no women experienced their cycles even once throughout that horrific ordeal.

While in the tent cities no one is conspiring to actively commit genocide against the Haitians, the comparison to the Nazi holocaust was an interesting one for me to contemplate. People have been forcibly removed from their homes; have no privacy, and no control of their own future or well being. Their health is at constant risk and they have no positive way to occupy themselves.

I mentioned earlier that on our last day we went to a tent community where no Drs had been before. There had been another team close by, but they were the equivalent of multiple suburban blocks away which is too far for someone to walk if they are seriously ill. The fact that no team had been there before created some anxiety in the crowd waiting for us when we arrived. I never felt unsafe, but things could have potentially changed quickly and, at the least, forced us to leave without treating patients.
At one point, I asked a translator if there was a place to go to the bathroom. He went and found one of the local Haitian men and we walked a bit down the rocky inclined street that had tents on one side and concrete homes on the other. The roofs were a combination of rusted metal and plastic. I think they had probably cleaned up the street for us because I don't remember noticing any trash or burned evidence of trash. The man led me to a concrete hallway between 2 homes and I followed him chasing a juvenile chicken into a courtyard that seemed to join several living areas. The courtyard must have been about 8 feet wide and 10 feet long and was open to the sky above. There were two toilets in separated 2x2 concrete walled rooms here and even when I asked in French why 2 of them, I didn't find out the purpose of each one. I think rubble was piled up against the back wall of the courtyard or some kind obstruction(s) that looked like construction clutter to me at the time. The toilets were concrete holes that had been built up so at least you could sit on them and there was an actual toilet seat permanently stuck to the concrete. I don't know where it went, but it was deep enough and dark enough that I could not see the bottom. A lace curtain was drawn across the opening of one of the rooms for privacy. I took some of the women on our team to this place a few hours later and witnessed some twin girls taking a bath in a plastic tub and a woman cooking over fire on something that had been rigged up to hold a pot. I tried to speak some French to the 1 year old-ish twins "Salut les petits." The woman cooking could say Bonjour back, but wasn't able to speak any more French to me, another older child in a doorway behind her said nothing. They didn't react and pretty much all stared at us. I have no idea what they were thinking, but they looked tired and a little afraid. From the looks on their faces, I doubt they'd ever had a white person in their bath/kitchen courtyard. It was time for lunch, and I walked back to the tent area where we were treating patients and ate a pre-packaged meal I'd brought from the states, drank some water and we chatted about some work things and the cute little twins - then we got back to work and finished up our last afternoon of treating patients in Haiti. I didn't really think about it much till later but seeing that family's home was actually a nice bright spot for me; some semblance of normal behavior in an otherwise very chaotic environment.