MISSION TO HAITI: DAY 2

The good news: I slept for about 3 hours last night, on the floor, with no air conditioning and faulty mosquito netting. How do they get through the netting?? There is no coffee. We have no way to heat water. So instead of coffee, I had Ragaman. Whoa! It's called a ginseng energy drink. Good Lord, I thought I was gonna go through the roof. I almost had to call my favorite cardiologist. Breakfast was 2 Cliff Bars.

We started the day by loading our truck with medical supplies: IV solutions, meds, tubing, you name it. We loaded it on the truck and delivered it to DIRT – Disaster Immediate Relief Team. They are a small group of very young relief workers who find out who needs what in terms of medical supplies, finds a way to procure them and sees to it that they get delivered. My little team does the same but since we all have the same goal, we help each other out. After that drop off we went to General Hospital which is now a large group of tents set up outside the hospital (the hospital buildings are very unstable), to find out what they need. We pull in front of a guarded, chaotic makeshift hospital with a stench that stung our eyes. There is no sanitation in Haiti - none. Sewage runs into the streets. It was bedlam. Men, women and children lying on gurneys, crying or too weak to cry. Doctors were calling out for medications that were either not available or impossible to find. A child was seizing. It was a sight (and smell) I will not soon forget. I talked to the doctor in charge about the set up and agreed to talk to the administrator about working there. I’ll go back tomorrow. We got a list of everything they needed. The problem is, right after the earthquake, hundreds of thousands of medical supplies were donated form people and companies around the world. There are piles and piles and piles of medications and medical supplies sitting in hospitals that have closed (which is a whole other story) and warehouses. There is no organized distribution. Small teams have gotten together to work the problem. I’m on one of those teams.There are 3 of us; Little Paul, Big Paul and me. It’s crazy and there is so much needless suffering. We got the list, got the supplies and delivered them. It’s amazing how happy IV tubing can make a person. It’s the little things. From there we went to the orphanage again. Sweet faces of beautiful children whose parents either perished in the quake OR abandoned them. Really, so incredibly heartbreaking. The orphanage workers treated us to Easter Dinner. I’ll never forget it. Most Haitians are beautiful people. We made one more supply drop and called it quits for the night.

It’s absolutely impossible to imagine what’s going on here. It’s an apocalypse.

'Thank you" to everybody who is helping me during the day with medical questions and questions about medications. Many of the medications that have been donated are from countries other than the United States. Most of the names are similar enough to their English counterparts but others don't have an English equivalent. Thank God for my Blackberry and thank God for Verizon for keeping me connected 24/7.