9500 Tetanus vaccines distributed in under 5 hours – Haiti update 07/15/2010

Quick update on the orphanage with the abused girls.  On Tuesday we met at with the Medishare pediatricians, a cabinet member, presidential aide, and the Mayor of the city the orphanage is in.  We did not get a definitive answer as to what they are going to do but we were told to standby and they will call with a date and time for their extraction.  We have not heard anything yet and are still impatiently waiting.  We have done everything in our power to this point and now it’s up to the officials to make the call.  I guess the church has a pretty strong hold on the government here so we will keep praying for these little girls.

I didn’t want to distract from the seriousness of this situation by talking about other things we are doing but since we have some down time while waiting I thought it would be good to let everyone know what other things MMRC has going on.

Tetanus Vaccine Distribution – Late Saturday afternoon I received a call from Dan over at IMC and he informed me that the 299th CSH had 8,000 doses of Tetanus (Td) Vaccine that they needed to move or it would have to be destroyed.  I immediately said yes to it knowing that it would move quickly.  Dan originally said we had to pick it up by 10am Sunday morning but then called back saying that we had to get it by 6 am.  If any of you know me well you know I hate mornings, but this is a rare exception to the rule.  We got up at 4:45am on Sunday, drove to the base, got the Td, and headed home.  By the way, the 8,000 vaccines turned out to be 9,500 doses and it filled the back of the pickup truck.

One the way back we had a little delay when I got stopped by a cop for supposedly running a red light.  Whatever.  he took my licence, gave me a ticket and we were on our way.  While en route to the house I called everyone I could think of that could get to us right away and handle a large volume of vaccines.  By noon we had moved out all of the vaccines to different organizations and we also distributed 9 pallets of supplies to those that came.  I find it really easy to move extra supplies that we have when you can bribe/bait the other NGO’s with vaccines.  It’s like chumming.  BTW, I got my license back on Monday (Don’t ask)…

Lina –

Jessica and Matt this one is for you guys.  We did our first round of chemotherapy today on Lina today.  She is a wonderful woman who is suffering from cervical cancer and went to the states for treatment but from what I understand there wasn’t much that could be done short term.  Matt and Jessica have been working with her for a while and they brought her back to Haiti about 2 weeks ago.  So today we did our first treatment.  PJ, our resident compounding pharmacist (local drug dealer) did an amazing job of managing her pain and making sure everything was mixed perfectly.  Lina was a hard stick and she was also pretty dehydrated when she came in.  After 7 attempts by 2 nurses and a doc, Tina finally got a 22g in her hand so we could hydrate her enough to get the 18g in her that was needed for treatment.  After her first liter of fluids it was time for the chemo and the resident Haitian anesthesiologist did an amazing job at getting her EJ (external jugular) IV set up.  We had to do it at this site since her veins were not in good condition.  Once the IV was in we did the chemo on her.  She never got nauseous and seemed comfortable while going through this whole process that took 7 hours.  Lina is a beautiful woman and it is so unfortunate that this is happening to her.  She is in our prayers and we hope the best for her.

That’s about all I can think of for now.  My mind is all over the place and every time I sat down to blog today I had to go do something so please forgive the grammatical errors.  We’ve got a lot of things planned for the next couple of weeks and I am really looking forward to having Jeanne, Ellen, Pigpen, Heather, and Tuwanda with us this month.  We are going to be hitting up a few new orphanages that need help, and we are hoping to gain access to some warehouses full of food and supplies. 

As you all know we are working as hard as we can to make things happen here.  There are so many people who depend on us and there are so many kids that we need to help.  Above all we need to be here and we need your help.  I’m asking everyone to read this to please donate whatever you can to our cause, even if it’s only $10.  Your donations go straight to the work we are doing and directly to helping the people of Haiti.  You can make your donations through our website at www.mmrc-us.org 

Thank you so much for your emails and your emotional support but now I am asking all of you for financial help.  I am working on getting grants since the work we are doing is so much bigger than us, and I want to do a speaking tour with LP in the beginning of August to help raise awareness and funding to our cause.  If you know of any groups we can talk to that can help us with funding please email me and let me know. 

I love all of you and thank you for all your support. 

Big Paul