AOPA Pilot Magazine - August 2015 - 80

There are no insurance companies or hospital administrators
to deal with, no reports to write, and no forms to fill out.
There are only patients in need of care, and the focus is on
healing. "This is what drew me to medicine in the first place,"
Rizor said. "At home, it's easy to forget that."

panoramic views of the city below. Each morning they
ride to a different medical clinic, work all day without pause, and return just after sunset. They provide
care in bucolic country settings where the volunteers
perform their tasks in the shade of mango trees; and
they work in the most dangerous slums by the riverfront where pigs, goats, and dogs rummage through
seemingly endless heaps of garbage.
Each day is a grueling marathon, but Rizor says
he feels strangely energized at the conclusion of each
session. There are no insurance companies or hospital administrators to deal with, no reports to write,
and no forms to fill out. There are only patients in
need of care, and the focus is on healing. "This is what
drew me to medicine in the first place," Rizor said. "At
home, it's easy to forget that."
Patients sometimes gather outside the hotel
where the medical team stays. And they await
the volunteers at each clinic they visit. Even though
the volunteers work quickly and without interruption, lines of patients grow throughout the day as
word spreads via cellphone calls and text messages
that doctors and nurses are dispensing free medical
care.
The volunteers often begin each workday by holding hands in a prayer circle, and a Haitian minister
gives a soaring invocation in songlike, French-based
Creole. The patients sometimes must wait for hours
and through periods of rain and withering sun. It's
not uncommon for tempers to fray in angry shouts
and desperate pushing and shoving.
80 | AOPA PILOT August 2015

The volunteers rely on simple medical tools:
blood pressure cuffs, stethoscopes, flashlights, tongue
depressors, as well as their own highly refined senses.
"Don't let the lack of resources reduce the level of
care you provide," Haynes tells the volunteers, many of
whom are students in the nurse practitioner program
at Emory University, in a morning briefing/pep talk.
"Be resourceful," she said in a steel-magnolia Southern
accent. "Rise above it. Nothing here is easy."
THE WORST PART

Sometimes things are way beyond not easy. They're
impossible.
That was true following Haiti's devastating 2010
earthquake, a historic disaster that killed an estimated
60,000 people and maimed tens of thousands of others-and the 2011 cholera outbreak that followed.
The medical volunteers and their thin resources were
dwarfed by the immense scale of those tragedies.
Haitian orphans, who learned to speak English at a
facility Eternal Hope in Haiti operates in Cap-Haitien,
serve as translators for the medical volunteers and
their protectors.
Outside the clinic gates, the crush of people
includes elderly men and women, and mothers with
infants in arms. At a picnic table that serves as an
examining area for two volunteer teams, there's both
happiness and heartbreak. A young pregnant woman is
overjoyed at hearing her baby's heartbeat for the first
time, and unabashed tears stream down her cheeks.
At the same moment, a 49-year-old woman stoically

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - August 2015