The Story from Haiti (Installations 1 & 2)

ROMPsters,

The team is safely back from Haiti and these blog installments will give a run down of what here orthotics team experienced during the week. Stay tuned for a few more updates:

Day 1. August 15th. The day has arrived. All the group get together in Miami except Julie. First person i see is Mike Oros and John Angelico and i cant help to hug them, im so happy to see them. Then i realize there is also a little woman right by them … Heather! so i say hello and i like her as soon as she asked the first question "Do you think its allright if i have shorts on?" Cause i knew later on she would get to realize how little i knew about fashion and how clueless i was about the situation in Haiti. I still said that it didn't matter to wear shorts but more to give her peace rather than for being sure about it. No one knew who Julie was. I picture her as a thin little asian woman... the group is jealous of me cause im going in first class. We get to Haiti, and we are surprised by the non chaotic situation of the airport. We find Julie, not at all what i imagined. Outside we find Gail, our host. Hop in the bus and start submerging into a totally different reality, a destroyed world. The energy of the group is good regardless of the first impressions of the city. But it is sad and i realize that it will take years in order to make this a better place. Garbage, poverty, disorder, dust, and tons of people selling stuff. The colorful buses give the city a brush of art and color. Life continues nevertheless and people find their way of surviving. It is amazing.

We get to the guest house. We are assigned a room for the girls, that room for me seemed taken out of an old fairy tale, maybe for the tones, and for the mosquito netting over the beds that looked like lace. Dinner was tasty. It frustrates me that Mike doesn't get a chocolate pudding. The group gets ready to hop in the pool. Its hot. I feel guilty about swimming when i know that 20 feet from there there are tents and poverty… but im too hot so i dive in anyways. After that we are told that our group will be leaving at 6 am. Before bed im introduced to a new card game Euchre. I think i never earned any respect from my group on that end. Time to go to bed and get ready for the adventure.

Day 2. We are supposed to wake up at 5h30 for Yoga. Heather will be the teacher. She wakes me up at 5h30 and tells me "DONI im actually going to sleep 15 min more" … so i guess there was no yoga that day. Breakfast, shower and got ready to leave. It would take us around 4 hours in order to get to Fond des Blancs , to the Spinal Cord Injury center. We traverse the messy capital again and we go past all sort of vendors. Mike needs to buy flip flops. So we stop in the market. A basket filled with tons of sandals, some were orphans , some had a mate.. finally found one pair that fit him; the girls also want something and they like my style ;) so they get a bandana, the group starts to gel and to look alike. Out of Port au Prince, we enter a green maze that mixes with the blue (bleu) sky.

Got to the Hospital and a beautiful french girl (Lauriane) received us. She is so small, that i feel like Hulk next to her. We start working right away. The PT in charge is not there. Lauriane guides us and introduces us to the patients. All injured during the earthquake. Beautiful people, all of them look like ebony sculptures. We all feel sorry for the situation and we try to make it as good as we can with the abilities we have learned. We all cast. Julie and Heather do too. They are great, real volunteers ready to do anything no matter what. We ended up seeing 6 pt's:



1. Dominique 26 y/o. Math Teacher. Spinal cord injury. Made 2 KAFOs (leg braces)

2. Mamette: 27 y/o. Beautiful woman. Mom of 2. Spinal Cord Injury, followed by some complications due to lack of compliance and care from her family. Got a TLSO (spinal brace) and 1 KAFO.

3. Gina: 26 y/o. Teacher. Spinal Cord Inijury complete. Very weak. Rx: B AFOs (foot braces) for transfer and positioning.

4. Monique: 26 y/o. Could not know much from her. She was deaf/mute. Spinal Cord Injury. Weakness. B AFOs for Transfer and positioning.

5. Nestly: Spinal Cord Injury and BE amputee. Mike starts to fabricate a prosthesis for him.

6. Maxo: 43 y/o. Carpenter. Spinal Cord Injury incomplete. HE had good strength on R leg. Rx: R AFO, L KAFO.

All patients injured after the earthquake. After hours of evals and castings Mike and I know that its going to be a hard butt kicking week. We go up to shower, to eat and to play some Euchre. Julie & I couple of smart ass girls choose the beds first, the ones againts the wall thinking that they were better... only to realize later what a bad choice we made cause the beds had tons of minuscule bugs walking all over. I sleep with socks, the socks on top of my pants, as if i was ready to ride a bike. Mike is not able to sleep that night due to the snoring of several guys in there.



Here are some pictures of the team and the action from these first two days. Another post to come tomorrow...day 3 and 4!

Dani

Update from Team Haiti (Team John Angelico that is)

The ROMP team in Haiti has been split into two groups. The larger group is working in Les Cayes at the Spinal Clinic seeing lots of orthotic patients. The second group is John Angelico. Now, I know that one person technically does not qualify as a group. But, in the world of prosthetics a guy like John Angelico might as well be considered a whole damn prosthetic clinic. He's been thrown into the fray solo, working with Spanish and French speaking students and practitioners. In spite of it all, as a one man all-star team, he's been making legs and teaching through multiple language barriers. When I was a kid John was my principal prosthetist. After making lots of legs for me he was kind enough to teach me a bit of his magic. Now you can all read about his adventures on his self-titled "Not so Super Cool Blog"


It's damn good and hilarious too.

Dave

Day 3 Haiti

I'm not in Haiti so I cant really say much except that the team is there and they are working.

For team member John Angelico's blogspot check this out.

Dani's email message from last night:

Bonjour Eric & Dave,

First of all im glad you guys thought of me to come here. We did not have any translator, except a girl that is working here from france :) so i was able to split with her and do all the talking and casting. Pts do understand a lot of french and so far all the pts we have evaluated are just beautiful.
Organization side things have been a bit off. We came here and there was nothing really planned, but we figured things out and we ended up casting and evaluating. We were at a Spinal Cord Injury hospital so all the pts needed something. We ended up casting for 5 AFOs and 2 Kafos and tomorrow we ll cast for other 2 KAFOS. So Mike and I will be fabricating tomorrow at les cayes, and well make sure that the PT and the Doctor (who are great) work their butts off too :) they actually casted for AFO today.
We also deliverd that TLSO and it fit great! That patient was so nice, we have tons tons of pictures. We have not used a KRONOS (team journal) at all, cause we have been just travelling for 5 hours to get here and in the afternoon we were working and taking pics and filming till 7 pm and now they are having some Prestiges (Haitian beer) and chilling out. This house has so many people that we/they are all talking and getting to know eachother.

What else... ill have more info and date of pts in the report.
Eric you send three shirts for each volunteer, thank you for that. But we ended up giving up one of those two to Menette, Gina, MOnique , Lauraine and taking pics with it :) i have 2 less but oh if you would have seen their smiles :)

Ok that is all for now. We are all good. And i think everybody is happy and tired.

Je vous souhaite une bon journe.
Love,
Dani.

Day 1 Haiti Trip

I dropped Dani off at the Quito International Airport at 4:30am. By know she is somewhere over the Carribbean about 30 minutes away from landing in Port-Au-Prince. The team is comprised of seven rehabilitation specialists (1 Prosthetist, 1 Orthotist/Prosthetist, 1 Board Eligible Orthotist, 2 PT's, 2 Physicians). The team will be split into two groups. One will work at the Handicap International Headquarters in Port-au-Prince with mostly prosthetic patients. The second group will visit three or four sites outside of Port-au-Prince focusing on orthotics cases, spinal fractures, paralysis, nerve damage of the extremities and educational seminars for local professionals.

The ROMP team is being hosted by the Healing Hands for Haiti Foundation. Thank you HHHF for your help in arranging the project. Hope to have more news shortly.

Dave

Message from Ecuador

In typical style I've been a little lax with my blogging responsabilities. That's not to say that there's nothing to write about. Just too little time. The July visit to Guatemala with the Illini Prosthetics Team was a success. The IPT is working on a new, low-cost prosthetic arm technology. We were able to work with several ROMP patients testing the prototypes. The feedback that our patients shared has been invaluable to the team of engineers as they begin working on the new and improved models. More information from Illini Prosthetics.

In other news, same hemisphere just different country, ROMP will be sending its first team to Haiti in less than two weeks! Our long-term friendship with the very dedicated Healing Hands for Haiti Foundation has led to this. A team of 7 professionals from the Chicago area, Minnesota and Ecuador (my wife Daniela) will participate in a 9 day project focusing on education and clinical assistance in two rehab centers on the island. In Port-au-Prince, the team will work at the Handicap International rehab center with prosthetics students from Haiti and the University of Don Bosco in El Salvador. They will provide educational seminars and work together on specific patient cases. Outside of Port-su-Prince, the team will work in a spinal injury center with orthotists and rehabilitation specialists.

This is the first ROMP trip to Haiti but not the last. We are proud to work with Healing Hand for Haiti Foundation and honored to serve the Haitian people in our own small way.

My brother and Pat Mathay are more than halfway done with their impressive endeavor, Riding for ROMP 2010. They left Eugene, Oregon (on their bikes) on June 19th and are now sleeping soundly (I hope) in Manzanillo, Mexico just south of Puerto Vallarta. At the end of the month they enter Guatemala for the 6-day home stretch through killer 6,000 foot climbs and the winding, volcano-shaped terrain of Guatemala all the way to the ROMP lab in Zacapa. As of now they have raised around $25,000 for ROMP projects and have had quite an experience along the way.

There's so much more to come and I hope that whoever might be reading this little 'ol blog will someday too have a chance to be a part of it. Oh, and by the way, I haven't even told you yet about what's starting here in Ecuador for ROMP...later.

Dave

Fighting Illini meets ROMP

IPT (Illini Prosthetics Team) is in Guatemala. In true university style we spent Sunday afternoon cheering with the locals over Spain's victory over the Dutch, Netherlanders, people from Holland, Clockwork Orange, the Naranja Mecanica (can never figure out what they are really called). We went into the lab yesterday morning and set-up shop. Due to the World Cup Championship game we didn't even attempt to tamper with the culturally revered, sanctified and ever holy sport of futbol. Instead of scheduling patients today that would have stood us up we played it differently. This morning I offered educational courses to our professional staff about above and below the knee prosthetic design and theory. We watched the game together and are more than rested for the work week. Check out the daily IPT blog updates and photos of the experience. Patients start showing up in the morning. Later....

View it por favor:
IPT BLOG

Dave

Prosthetic Arm Project in Guatemala

A month after it all went down I finally put together a short movie about the prosthetic arm project that we completed mid-March. Special funding from many individual donors and the Louis Berkowitz foundation along with component donations from Fillauer, LTI and Scheck & Siress made the project possible. In October 2009 we met German and Cesar, two young men with both of their arms amputated from the shoulder down due to electrical burns. It took us a few months to get the necessary supplies together and four days of hard work at the Loren Jay Mallon ROMP Guatemala clinic to finish the prosthetic arms. Chicago-area prosthetist and long-time ROMP volunteer David Rotter was the mastermind behind the prosthetic design. David and I started Sautuday morning and by Tuesday night Cesar and German and their families left the clinic with their one-of-a-kind prosthetic arms.

Check out this YouTube video to see the fabrication and fitting process with German and Cesar.

Thanks to everyone that made this project possible. Without your support German and Cesar would have never received their new arms.

David Krupa