From the Southtown Star: February 14, 2010

Dr. Yves-Mario Piverger, a family physician at MetroSouth Medical Center in Blue Island, is in earthquake-ravaged Haiti to care for the injured. The doctor spent eight years of his childhood living within walking distance of Haiti’s presidential palace in its capital city, Port-au-Prince. He is e-mailing periodic updates to the SouthtownStar about his experience.

Left for New York, Delta Airlines waived extra baggage fee, and I was cleared to take 400 pounds of supplies. In New York met the remainder of the team – two orthopaedic surgeons and their tech, a pediatrician, a pharmacist, one ICU doctor. We were met by a team bringing supplies from a church group.

Spent most of the night getting acquainted and woke up early next morning to connect with our flight to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Once in Santo Domingo, we connected with a pastor and another orthopod. Spent quite of bit of time on the ground due to logistics concerns. An unknown benefactor chartered a plane, and we were flown into Port-au-Prince that night.

Coming into Port-au-Prince airport was surreal. The plane taxied off the runway onto a grassy field, and we were let off far from the gate. A van came out to meet us as military planes taxied. We walked into a terminal and into the street where we were met by Marines who escorted us onto a waiting bus.

Port-au-Prince was dark and quiet. A pungent odor hung in the air. The bus ride was slow, quiet and tense. We came upon a little girl lying face down on the side of the road. Obviously dead. Not sure if she was a victim of the earthquake or some other calamity as there was nothing around her to suggest a cause of death. No one said a word.–The bus kept rolling, and the darkness redraped the girl.
No other bodies were seen during this slow run to our final destination. Many tents along the road. Many fires. As we drove further into the city, young men manned stations detouring us from improvised tent communities, sleeping pedestrians, breaks in the road. Makeshift signs requested help in various languages. We pulled into Leogane under the full cover of darkness and only had our headlights to show rows of makeshift tents lining the streets. Our bus squeezed past the seated, the sleeping, the dispossessed on our way to nursing school-turned-trauma center. The bus pulled into the gates of the compound to find a tent community already had sprung up outside the walls of the nursing school.

We filed out of the bus and into the compound. We were met by a nurse who asked who could assist her with a sick patient -something about diabetic. I crossed the campus and came upon a tent surrounded several physicians.–As I got closer, I heard the loud cries of a woman within the tent saying, “Kisa map fe (What will I do now?).” The girl had died. Seems she came in earlier that day and was found to be in diabetic ketoacidosis. There was no insulin, and fluids were not enough.–She died within minutes of our arrival.

We left the tent, now known to me as the ICU tent, and were welcomed by the physicians, veterans of the current team, and briefed about the setup. My skill set as a French-Creole-Spanish speaking family physician-obstetrician was highly welcomed. There had not been an OB on the team. Before daybreak I delivered my first baby on a mattress in a stockroom.