When Hank Clever, MD, signed up to go to Haiti more than six months ago, he thought he knew exactly what it would be like.  After all, he’d been there before to conduct a dermatology clinic, so he was familiar with the people and their needs.

 

But that was before the devastating earthquake on January 12.  Dr. Clever knew then that things definitely would be different.  What he didn’t know was how different.

 

“It was one of the most heart-wrenching things I have ever done in my life,” he said just days after his return. “I am exhausted.”

 

Dr. Clever and his group from Jasper, IN, combined with volunteers from St. Louis, left on Saturday, January 30 for Hôpital Sacré Coeur in Milot, Haiti.  With just 73 beds, the hospital is the largest private hospital in the north of Haiti. 

 

The team included two dermatologists (Dr. Clever and Mike McCadden, MD), a plastic surgeon (Chris Paletta, MD), three physical therapists, two construction workers and Reporter Casey Nolan from KSDK-Channel 5. After an approximately 17-hour trip – St. Louis to New York to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic – they flew into a small airport in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti.  From there, they took a 12-mile gravel road to Milot.

 

“They shoveled nine people and luggage into an SUV,” Dr. Clever says.  “We couldn’t move or see out.”

 

When he found out his luggage was going on top of the SUV, Dr. Clever says he decided to take his camera out of his bag.  “The road isn’t paved,” he continued, “and there were a lot of pot holes.  The luggage fell off four times!’

 

Once they arrived in Milot, the work began and never stopped.  “It’s hard to imagine the severity, the number of injuries, and the need,” Dr. Clever says.  “It was like being in a war without the shooting.”

 

The hospital is so small, he says, there was a problem with overcrowding. 

 

“We were tripping over people, and we couldn’t work,” he says.  “We had to put a limitation on visitors and the people weren’t so happy, but they were very gracious about it all.”

 

And, while they were using three of the five rooms in a school house across the street as part of the hospital, still more room – and electricity – was needed.  Patients were on thin mattresses or straw on the floor until beds and cots were donated.

 

“Can you imagine,” Dr. Clever said, “having just had your leg amputated and trying to lie on a straw mattress?  Not being able to get up by yourself?  It was difficult to watch.”

 

During the week that Dr. Clever was there, the military plowed a banana field to set up five large army tents to hold 150 cots and added electricity to three school rooms and two of the tents.

 

He says the amount of supplies and people there to help was amazing, but that it was a gradual organization process. Each evening, they would meet to discuss what went wrong and how they could do better. 

 

The dermatology clinic appointments already had been set up before the earthquake, and since there was no way to communicate with those coming to the clinic, Dr. Clever held the clinic in the morning.  But in the afternoon, his role turned to wound care and assisting in the operating room.

 

“Everyone pitched in and did what they could do,” he says.  “There were two oral surgeons in the OR administering anesthesia and a dentist doing triage.”

 

But the real heroes, Dr. Clever says, are the people of Haiti.  “This is a people who have nothing who are taking care of people who have even less,” he explained.
 
But among the “horror” Dr. Clever describes, there were also miracles.

 

It was late afternoon on Tuesday and they had seen everyone they could see that day.  When they checked the waiting area to see who was left, there was an older woman holding a little boy, and an older man.  Both the boy and man had their heads wrapped in gauze.

 

“They had been waiting – patiently – all day, and had actually arrived at the hospital the night before.  The woman and boy had walked from Port-au-Prince,” Dr. Clever says, “which is 100 miles and a two-and-a half-week walk on gravel roads and rough terrain.  The man had walked from Cap-Haïtien.”

 

“We undid the gauze on the little boy – who we later found out was 3 years old – and his left ear was dangling on his cheek.  He had been hit by a brick during the earthquake and since the wound was not bad enough to have an amputation, he couldn’t get any care [in Port-au-Prince].”

 

The woman with him was his aunt, and she had had lost everything.  She walked the two and a half weeks to get care for her nephew as he was all she had left.

 

The man in the waiting area had been mugged in Cap-Haïtien, Dr. Clever says.  After a gang took his wallet, they poured gas on his head and lit a match.  His scalp, face and neck were “gone” on the left side.  After the mugging, he bandaged himself and walked to Milot, which is about 12 miles.

 

“The miracle is that neither wound was infected,” Dr. Clever says.  The man received a skin graft and the boy got his ear fixed and both were okay.  On Friday, we took the dressing off the little boy and the ear was back in place.”

 

Dr. Clever says the woman looked at the boy and cried.  “She wanted to give us something,” he says, “but she had nothing to give.

 

“I truly believe that these people are suffering in place of us,” he continued.  “They are suffering so that our hearts may be open, and we may see the true riches that they have and our own poverty amidst our wealth of ’things.’”