HIS LIFE SAVED, BROWARD PASTOR RETURNS TO HAITI
(Miami Herald) - By Frances Robles
A Broward pastor lost parts of both feet to malaria after spending months doing earthquake relief in Haiti, but he's returning to the country in January to launch an orphanage.
Longtime missionary Brian Kelso will return to Haiti in January, this time like thousands of people who survived a 7.0 tremor there -- as an amputee.
The Weston pastor spent months this year in Haiti doing earthquake relief, and it nearly cost him his life. After two months in the hospital, 40 hours in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, Kelso lost half his right foot and the toes on his left.
His right foot is now a size 4.
``A mosquito and I had a rendezvous,'' he explains.
The Presbyterian missionary who dedicated the last decade, and a bulk of 2010, to charity work in Haiti contracted malaria. His body slid into sepsis. His organs shut down; his ears, knees and feet turned black.
But this isn't a guy who gives up. The Christ the Covenant Church pastor will go back to Haiti for the Jan. 19 ground-breaking of a new orphanage for a village ripped by despair.
``The little bit that I went through truly can't compare to the suffering people in Haiti go through every day,'' Kelso said. ``Are you kidding me? They don't have water, opportunities, food, medical care. I was on my deathbed, but look at the medical care available to me.
``In the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal.''
Kelso is an Indiana native who moved to South Florida with his wife 22 years ago. He founded the Great Commission Alliance a decade ago with the goal of equipping leaders, educating children, and escorting teams of missionaries to the poverty-stricken country.
Its work is focused in Mirebalais, some 35 miles north of Port-au-Prince, where the population nearly doubled after the quake.
``I called him and said, `Things are really bad here, I don't think you should come,' '' said Marcel Baptiste, pastor of the New Hope Haitian Church in Homestead and Kelso's partner in Haiti.
``Nobody could stop him. We went village to village with water, clothes and medicine. He would meet a guy with no leg and start to cry.''
Kelso is the first to tell you: He cries a lot. He cries meeting the orphans. He chokes up during his sermons. His eyes well up as he tells the story about his climb from the ``valley of the shadow of death.''
It starts with the Jan. 12 earthquake, which killed 300,000 people and left 1.5 million on the street. For weeks afterward, Kelso had an exhausting routine: Tuesday morning flight from Fort Lauderdale to Santo Domingo, then a grueling 10-hour drive to the Haitian village where he and other missionaries doled out food and tents to homeless quake victims.
Kelso would be back in Weston to preach by Sunday.
In May, the 52-year-old missionary began feeling fatigued. In August, an excruciating headache.
For the first time in 30 years, he asked another pastor to stand in for him at the pulpit.
With a 103-degree fever, Kelso checked himself into Memorial Hospital Miramar, and doesn't remember anything since. ``He was knocking on heaven's door,'' said Dr. Blane Shatkin, medical director of Memorial Hospital Pembroke's Wound Treatment Center.
Doctors thought he had dengue but then determined he had 20 percent malaria in his blood.
Malaria is caused by a parasite, which is transmitted by bites from infected mosquitoes. The parasites multiply in the liver and infect red blood cells.
At least 30,000 cases of malaria are confirmed each year in Haiti, but the true rate is believed to be much higher. In the six weeks after the Jan. 12 earthquake, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 11 aid workers contracted malaria in Haiti, including six members of the U.S. military.
It's often fatal.
With Kelso's organs failing and malaria blood count ``incompatible with life,'' doctors took a desperate action: They gave him a medicine the pastor later learned is sometimes dubbed ``leave 'em dead.'' Similar to adrenaline, the medicine constricts blood vessels and increases blood pressure and sugar levels. It makes the blood work overtime to keep the heart and brain alive.
``There were times I thought, `I'm going to lose him. It's so unfair. He's doing good work,' '' said Barbara, Kelso's wife of 32 years. `` `This is the man I want to get old and retire with and travel with, and that's all over -- because he's been going to Haiti?' I'd get upset and come back to reality and realize: That's God's plan.''
In and out of delirium, Kelso hallucinated. He thought he was part of an Obama administration infectious disease study. ``I woke up one day and started pulling the tubes out,'' he remembers. ``I didn't know where I was. My son Caleb told me: You have to trust us, or you are not going to make it. Trust them?
``OK, trust them.''
To ground him, Caleb got his dad to focus on the NFL opening game between the New Orleans Saints and the Minnesota Vikings. ``My father is so passionate and feels so strongly about Haiti,'' said Caleb, 24. ``I don't think he or God are ready for him to give this thing up.''
Doctors debated amputating both of Kelso's legs at the knee, but specialists intervened, using hyperbaric oxygen treatments to save his lower legs. He spent two hours a day in a chamber breathing 100 percent oxygen.
The pastor was inspired by his infectious disease specialist, an immigrant from Haiti.
``What is the difference between my doctor and the orphans in one of our orphanages?'' Kelso said. ``The difference is my doctor has been given opportunities, and the orphans haven't gotten any opportunities. Learning to read is not available to them. That's why I'm there. That's why I am going back.''
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