Answered Prayer

We're back home and all is well! Thank you so much for your prayers. We took Micheline to a trauma center in Port-au-Prince run by Medicines Sans Frontiers. They x-rayed her leg, determined it wasn't broken, gave her a shot and some pain meds, and we were on our way!

It was really scary to get that phone call that Micheline had been in an accident in the market and had been hit by truck- Please come right away! I had just finished reading Don Piper's account of his horrible accident, death, journey to heaven and back - "90 minutes in Heaven" (thanks Mitch!). Rusty scooped her (and a half dozen other Haitians, of course) up and we all loaded up, thinking it certainly appeared to be broken.

We passed a lot of interesting sights on the way in to PAP, but I don't have pics of any of them (a camera was the last thing on my mind). The market in Cabaret was especially crowded today, after making or way through that mess we had to stop again for a hog crossing the road near Titayen. I don't know why that struck me as odd today, there are often animals in the road- chickens, goats, dogs, donkeys, cows & even horses- but I thought how different this trip than one in the US would be.
On the outskirts of Titayen there was a large crowd of people gathered. A "stealer" had been caught. The crowd was holding him until the police arrived. How well known he was for his deeds, how angry the crowd was, and how long before the police arrived would determine if he would still be alive when they got there.
Later, near the river at Bon Repos, we saw billowing black smoke. As we neared the gas station there was anotherlarge crowd. A car was on fire and a huge dump truck was pushing it away from the gas pups and into the street.
We didn't have to take the lon way around. Things have been a lot more settled in Haiti the last few months, so we were able to drive right past Cite Soliel, notorious for it's gang violence. We drove past a UN outpost and passed at least 20 UN tanks while in PAP. The area around Cite Soliel is marked from the years of violence and gunfights. Bullet holes riddle all of the buildings that remain.
A little farther and we reach our destination -Trinity Clinic. Only the patient and 1 other is allowed inside the heavily guarded steel gate. I am chosen to go inside with Micheline, they do allow Nick to carry her in for me. Inside it's like stepping inside a US hospital from the 50's or 60's. Usually I'm a little intimidated going new places and meeting new people, but hospitals don't intimidate me- not even in Haiti. My dad was an Engineer at St. Vincent's during my growing up years and we even lived at the hospital for a while during a critical construction period, so I'm at home in them.
This clinic reminded me alot of St. Vincent's when I was very young. The first thing I noticed was the concrete walls and black and white checked floor- is this an ER theme? Then the tiled staircase with the wrought iron handrail. There were glass transoms over the doors just like in the old hospital.
Unfortunately, the patient areas were like the old hospital, too. High beds crowded together in ward rooms only inches apart without even a curtain to separate patients. In Micheline's ward there were men with IVs and broken limbs, bleeding women, and a burned child. Patients with drain tubes and worse were escorted to x-ray by orderlies carrying buckets with their bags & paraphernalia inside.
Fortunately, we were only at the clinic for a little over an hour. I spent the time waiting on the doctor to pray that the God who knit her together in the first place would do a miracle and knit her back together just as he 1st did. Merci Jezi, He answers prayer! We were soon on our way and counting our blessings all the way home!

P.S. to the Shindler Dr. team- the mystery green light at night is at the Mission of Hope near Titayen! I passed it after dark tonight on the way home!