Springs' docs back from Haiti, and plotting another trip

A small Haitian boy kept pointing skyward and saying something to the team of Colorado Springs doctors that they couldn’t understand. A translator finally told them his message: “God has a place in heaven for you.”

His voice was among a cacophony of sights and sounds coming at the team during their recent trip to earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The crew of 12 local doctors and nurses found their own way to the island, taking personal time, collecting donations of equipment, and hitching a ride on car dealer Bob Penkhus’ private plane.

In six days at the CDTI Hospital in Port-au-Prince, they performed about 125 procedures, mostly repairing open fractures that had gone untreated for more than two weeks, many with bones sticking out through the skin.

“I think you’re just humbled by the strength of the human spirit to survive,” said Dr. Rick Meinig. “They had every reason to give up and yet they cling to life.”

Just landing in Haiti wasn’t simple, said trip ringleaders Meinig and Dr. Paul Rahill of Front Range Orthopaedics. Penkhus had to squeeze in between military and government flights, tossing medical equipment into a waiting truck before he took off again.

Once there, the doctors slept on a pile of paper towel rolls and then got to work. The first day was quiet, they said. But then word got out and patients began arriving by the truckload, delivered by aid groups.

The two trauma teams from Colorado Springs tried to complete 20 surgeries a day, but there seemed to be an endless stream of patients. Because of the way falling cinder blocks had smashed their extremities, Rahill said, case after case was “almost the worst open fracture you can imagine.”

Rahill said it was overwhelming to realize they could never serve all the needs before them.

“I just wanted to fix everything, fix it all,” he said. “And there’s no way to do that. It has to be enough to help one.”

Meinig said one of his kids was badly burned in a car accident when he was only 4, and it has sensitized the doctor to the random nature of suffering. That is part of what inspired this trip to ease the pain of 125 badly injured people.

Despite the severity of their wounds, the doctors said their patients were stoic about the pain.

“They really didn’t show it,” Rahill said. “Those people are extremely tough.”

“They’re tough and they’re extremely spiritual,” Meinig said.

As they lay on their rolls of paper towels the first night, peering out at dusty piles of rubble, the doctors could hear families singing hymns in the darkness. One of their patients sang quietly for six hours in the hallway as she waited for her operation.

The operating rooms would have made MacGyver proud. When the doctors didn’t have the right equipment, they improvised. The post-op area was outside under tents. They wrote treatment instructions on the wound dressing and casts with a marker, hoping another doctor comes along for the next steps of treatment.

And the doctors are clearly worried about the people they treated. Will they develop infections? Will they heal correctly? Will they learn to walk again?

They’re starting to plot a second trip to Haiti in a few months. This time, they’re hoping to take physical therapists and prosthetic limbs.

“I think it’s going to be a lifelong involvement for those of us who went,” Meinig said.