ARTICLE - MISSIONARY ACCIDENT

Recently there was a serious accident involving a mission team. We know the missionary couple who were involved in the accident. Their mission does a lot of medical work as well finding medical care for children. This is how we know them. Their haitian son in still in the UM field hospital. On Monday doctors suggested amputation of both his arms due to the complex orthopedic injuries he suffered during the accident. His wife pleaded with the doctors to try and save his arms. The doctors did that and on Wednesday he had surgery to place and external fixator on his right arm. He went to surgery to debride his right arm and will be undergoing plastic surgery today to do a skin graft to cover his arm. Marc will be needing further treatment in the United States. We were at the hospital yesterday bringing patients for the plastic surgeries that will be held over the next few days and met Carole there to see Marc and speak with the doctors. Marc's parents are both in the United States and they want to bring him to the Miami area for further treatment. Pray that a hospital can be found for him in the United States. Pray also that his arms can be saved. He and his wife have 2 children and his wife is 7 months pregnant with their third child. While waiting by the operating room to meet the orthopedic surgeon we saw a patient being transferred from the operating room back to his bed. This haitian man too was one of the injured from that same accident. His lower left leg was amputated. Pray for healing for him as well and that he would receive an artificial leg. 17 people were involved in the accident and nobody was killed. Marc's father was the driver. Below is the article about this accident.


UM FIELD HOSPITAL HELP SAVE COLLEGE MISSIONARIES' LIVES
(Miami Herald) - By Nadege Charles

Wilckly Dorce faced an unimaginable choice: drive off the edge of a mountain with a group of college students doing mission work in Haiti aboard, or crash into the mountain wall.

He chose crashing into the side of the mountain.

``I didn't want to panic,'' Dorce said Friday. ``I steered the car into the mountain to save lives.''
Dorce estimated the truck topped speeds of 50 mph before it crashed and flipped over onto its side.

``We just left church,'' he said. ``God was with us.''

His action is credited with saving the lives of everyone aboard. Several of the students and their adviser, from Hannibal-LaGrange College in Missouri, were brought to Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center. Two remain hospitalized. Two others have since returned to Missouri.

The rest were given immediate care at the University of Miami Global Institute/Project Medishare field hospital in Port-au-Prince, which was established in the days immediately after the January quake.

Having the doctors at the field hospital in Haiti was a blessing.

``You guys would probably be reporting on funerals,'' said Alysa Askew, a 20-year-old junior, from her bedside at Jackson.

Askew, who was riding on the roof of the turquoise dump truck, was thrown the furthest after the Sunday crash. Her left ear was severed.

Doctors at the field hospital in Port-au-Prince reattached Askew's ear before flying her to Ryder.
``If anything good came from the earthquake, it is that this facility saved their lives,'' said Dr. Jonathan Jagid, a University of Miami assistant professor of clinical neurosurgery.

The students were taking part in an eight-day mission trip sponsored by Blessing Hearts International. Just before the accident, they were handing out tarps at a make-shift church service in the mountains.

Everyone climbed aboard the dump truck, which was being driven by Dorce, the husband of Dee Dorce, president of the mission.

They were going about 30 mph downhill on a curvy road in the Titanyen neighborhood when something seemed off. Although Wilckly Dorce put his foot on the brake pedal, the truck would not slow down.

Dorce took the curves, hugging the edge of the road, as the vehicle began going faster and faster.

``I looked at him and he was calm,'' Dee Dorce said. ``I said, `Do something.' ''

That's when she realized he was doing something.

Calmly, Wilckly Dorce was driving the car into the wall of the mountain.

``We are grateful to God because we could have went over the edge. None of us would have survived,'' she said.

Wilckly Dorce and their son Marc Dorce, 32, who are both Haitian, were treated in Haiti for their injuries.

Dee Dorce, who is not a Haitian national, flew into Miami to visit the students who were injured.