Day 1-2

On day 1, we flew into Santo Domingo and as we were leaving the airport, my dad, Dr. Schuster, met another doctor and a nurse and invited them to fly on our charter plane...along with three photo journalists (two from America, one from Sweden)...then two Hatian-Americans and invited them along as well. They offered to work with us as translators and also provided us a place to stay at one of their aunt's guest homes. We all sleep outside in a tent as no one is safe to stay indoors.

We started clinic on day two--waking at 4:30am. We work until approx. 5:00pm--we leave before dark for safety reasons. We do not eat a real breakfast or lunch...only a Power bar. We then have dinner at the guest house.

We went to the University General Hospital of Haiti and met with many other organizations. President Clinton and Chelsea came and spoke to Dr. Schuster about a patient needing urgent care. Later, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta also came and spoke to Dr. Schuster about the same patient. We have limited supplies, but all of the organizations are sharing their supplies.

Yesterday evening, Dr. Schuster bought meals for all of the starving patients. Yesterday, we met up with Dianne from the CMMB and today she is scouting another area that is in great need. The hospital we're working at has been claimed as the central focus of the entire disaster relief effort.

There is no way to give a number to the patients we have seen, but it is surely in the hundreds range I would imagine. There have been many who have died and up the road from the hospital, bodies and body parts were piled up. We have had many die in the hospital as well. So many amputations of limbs as well because the wounds are so deep and infected for far too long. The doctors just do not have the proper resources to save the body parts and do follow up care. THere will be a LARGE number of people missing limbs...hopefully, prosthetic specialists will provide a solution in the future. Many have lost everyone in their family. As you drive to the hospital, you pass by huge areas where EVERYONE is living on blankets or makeshift tents. Everyone is starving and clean water is VERY difficult to find. They are STILL finding people buried under buildings and buildings are still collapsing. People are waiting in long lines for the supermarket and many find that they have done so in vain as there would be no food or supplies left. A small baby was brought in yesterday that they had found buried under the rubble...she came in smelling of rotten flesh...we tended to her all day and she survived. All day long, all I hear are the tormented screams of pain from the patients in the hospital...they cry and scream from physical pain and the terrible reality that if they live, they have no family left, no home to return to, and no food or water...

At night, I lay in my tent and I hear someone crying. The sound is so long and so mournful, so pleading and desperate ...is it from an insufferable injury? O is it the lost of their family? I feel, it is a cry for the loss of almost everything they had... All I know for certain is that the sound fills my days and haunts my dreams.