photos - various neuro problems

With hydrocephalus, children's heads grow at different paces depending on the blockage in the brain. This baby has a quickly developing hydrocephalus. In general his entire head is growing larger.

This baby's head is growing larger in an upwards direction.

The bulge at the back of this baby's head is an encephalocele. This baby will have to go to the United States to get this removed.

Hydrocephalus frequently is accompanied by spina bifida. The bulge on this baby's back is called this name.

This boy has a small bulge at the top of his head. I don't know what causes this.

photos - hydrocephalus surgeries - part 1

This is Phara Simeon and her mother before surgery. She had traveled to the United States for surgery but her head continued to increase in size when she returned back to Haiti.

Here Pharah is relaxing in bed after her surgery. This time she had a shunt put in. Pray that there will be no infection or post-op problems for her. Her mother has 8 children.

Paulna was babysitter for the day to help look after John Charles. She did a good job!

Here is John Charles after surgery. His brain has been damaged by the increased pressure on the brain. At least with the surgery he will now be more comfortable. He will return to the Food for the Poor orphanage once he is discharged.

Cawens Sanon, the young baby from Gonaives is doing well after surgery.

photos - hydrocephalus surgeries - part 2

Daniellita Auguste is shown here being fed by her mother. She was another child who originally was not part of the surgical list but a place was made for her as well. In total 25 surgeries were done.

Daniellita is resting in bed after getting her surgery. She is also a little cross-eyed!

Guerdson Delile, the baby from Jeremie is resting on the bench waiting to find out when his turn for surgery will be.

Guerdson is a happy baby after surgery!

Some hydrocephalus babies have well developed brains despite the extra fluid in the brain. This baby was sitting up in bed and this is a before surgery photo!

photos - hydrocephalus surgeries - part 3

Vanessa Jules is an active little girl. She speaks well and enjoys to play with things in her hands.

Here she is after surgery. She is not too happy because of some pain but hopefully in a few days she will be her happy self again. She had a ventriculoscopy done.

Jonel Colo is a young baby who originally was not included on the list. The mother started to cry when she found out wondering what she would do. The medical team created another place on the list for him.

Here is Jonel Colo after surgery. His head size grew quite a bit from when the first picture was taken. Now his head size will not get any larger. His mother is happy that he got this opportunity for surgery.

Berny Guerrier is a very active boy. He was given 3 doses of medicine to sleep for his cat scan and it didn't work. The neurosurgeon ended up looking at another cat scan which had been taken when he was only 4 months old and not as active. He is a handful for his parents.

photos - hydrocephalus surgeries - part 4

Widmirtha Mervil has been living at Holy Angels since her mother had her baby. Johnny Rene used to be part of Coram Deo years ago as a sponsor student. He now helps to look after Widmirtha and he works at Holy Angels. Here he is removing Widmirtha's feeding tube in preparation for transport to the hospital.

Widmirtha had her shunt removed and the doctor found that it was infected. She is now on antibiotics to treat the infection in her brain. Pray the infection will go away after a round of antibiotics now that the shunt is no longer in place.

Peterson Lamy is a 4-month-old baby who has spina bifida. We will be trying to find medical care for him in the United States. A haitian evangelist met this family while evangelizing in an area and he brought the family over to Coram Deo this past week.

Peterson has a large bulge on his back. This condition is better treated in the United States.

Fidney Katnael St. Poulin is a 9-day-old baby girl that was born with hydrocephalus. Her mother had a caesarean section to give birth to her. We will be trying to find medical care for her in the United States as well. She was born a little jaundiced. Her mother is a very caring person.

haiti update - november 15, 2008

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

Hi! The search for survivors of the school that collapsed is now over and the special rescue teams have returned back to the United States and Martinique. Now heavy equipment is being used to demolish the remaining structure of the La Promesse School. The missing kindergarten teacher and her 12 students were all found dead. They died of suffocation. It just took too long to get to them. Burials of the victims have now started. The funeral for Samuel’s cousin Gerta is on Sunday. Pray for all those who are planning funerals and for those recovering from their injuries.
Monday afternoon we were visiting Hopital La Paix on Delmas 33 and a man was carrying a woman through the parking lot. He had brought her to the hospital with the hopes of obtaining medical care for her but the hospital is still on strike. He asked us if we could drive them to another hospital. The woman hadn’t been able to urinate for 2 weeks and she was in a lot of pain. Her belly and legs were swollen and she couldn’t walk well. It looked like she was in kidney failure. We drove them to the Bernard Mevs Hospital on Airport Road but they couldn’t help her there either as there were no available beds. We next tried Chancerelles Hospital hoping that they could at least put in a catheter but they wouldn’t take her in either. The next morning her husband brought her to General Hospital downtown and couldn’t find help for her there either. He called Lukner and told him that he couldn’t find anywhere for help. We went down to General Hospital but couldn’t find them there. They must have just got discouraged and went home. She probably has died by now. Pray that the state hospital strikes will be settled and that people will once again have a place to seek medical care. The government has fired the director of General Hospital and will replace him with a new director. This new director has the task of turning around the situation at this state hospital within 6 months. This will be a difficult task.
While we were at General Hospital searching for this woman and her husband an ambulance and a tap-tap came up to the emergency department and unloaded injured students from another school collapse. The Institution Mixte Grace Divine school is located in the Canape Vert area near the hospital there and is situated in the Bois Patate section. People were saying that once again a school collapsed with children inside. We didn’t know how many children were inside the school when it happened and we rushed over to try and help. As we were driving from the hospital we noticed that there were tires burning near the large downtown park. There was a group of about 30 young men standing on the one corner. We saw one car drive around the tires and keep going so we decided to do the same thing. We just hit the gas and horn/siren and passed with no problems. Later we found out that these men were throwing rocks at vehicles in the area but they must have gotten tired and ran out of rocks. They were protesting against the cost of living in Haiti. When we arrived in the Canape Vert region we had to walk up to the area where the school is located. It is in a dense area and the street was packed with people. Fortunately the school collapsed when the children were on recess and only 8 people got injured. Nobody was trapped inside the school. The pastor/owner of the school was constructing an addition to the school and this extra weight caused it to collapse. You have to walk through a narrow corridor to get to the school, as it is not near the road. We climbed up onto the roof of a nearby building and were able to see how the school collapsed. That same day there was also an incident at another school. Students are nervous now about the safety of their school and at a school in the Christ Roi area there was a panic when students felt what they thought was a tremor and rushed to exit the building. Some students were injured in this rush to escape. Hopefully the government will inspect all school structures to prevent further incidents. Because cement and rebar prices are very high some builders are cutting corners and putting less cement in their mixtures and less rebar in structures and this is a dangerous trend.
The hydrocephalus surgeries started on November 13th and ended on Saturday. They were held at Bernard Mevs Hospital on Airport Road. The Bitar brothers who are both surgeons run this hospital and they have been very supportive of the program. Without their agreement to open up their hospital to these children the surgeries would have had to be delayed. 25 children were able to receive brain surgery. Pray that they recover well from their operations. They are packed into the pediatrics ward. Late Saturday afternoon some of the children were transferred to the clinic at Dr. Joey’s, which is located in the Mais Gate area of Delmas 33. It is not in a good area and we had some trouble with some thugs. They didn’t seem to care that we were bringing food to babies and wanted some too. We have to come up with a different way of getting food to the children who are at Dr. Joey’s clinic. We picked up John Charles from the orphanage he is staying at Saturday morning and he had his surgery later in the afternoon. Paulna was babysitter for the day at the hospital. Guerdson Delile, the baby from Jeremie and Calwens Sanon, the baby from Gonaives both had surgeries as well. Widmirtha Mervil, the baby who has fluid coming from her navel had her shunt removed as well. Hopefully she will now be healthier not having the shunt as a constant source of infection. Pray that they all recover. There are always complications for some children after these types of surgeries. Pray a good post-op plan will be put into place to deal with these problems. We have been providing meals to the parents and children in the mornings and evenings while the children are in hospital. The next week will be busy planning to prepare paperwork for a couple of babies with hydrocephalus who were not part of the surgery process here in Haiti. Marcson Marcelin is a 3-month-old baby who is just starting with hydrocephalus. There is also a baby who is only a couple of weeks old who was born with a larger than normal head. This baby was born caesarean section. Another baby has a large spina bifida and we are trying to find help for her as well. Pray we can get the paperwork done to help these children and that hospitals can be found for them and medical visas obtained.
That is all the news for today. Have a good weekend!
Karen Bultje, Coram Deo

school collapse - haiti update - november 11, 2008

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Matthew 5:4

Hi! The tragedy at La Promesse College Evangelique affected a member of our family here at Coram Deo. Samuel Marcelin is a teacher who works at a local Christian mission school and lives here at Coram Deo. His cousin Gerta was the secretary at the La Promesse school. She was also a student in the afternoons attending a professional program at the school. She was sitting at her desk in the school office when the school collapsed around 10:30am last Friday morning. She was trapped under the rubble until late Saturday afternoon when searchers found her. She was pinned and her lower leg had been amputated. She was conscious when removed from the rubble and was rushed in an ambulance to the Medecins Sans Frontieres Hospital in the Delmas 19 area. She talked with the workers in the ambulance and gave them her name and family information. She told them about her family, the Marcelin family who lived in the Delmas 31 area and gave the workers her family’s telephone number. The family was called and told that she had been rescued and was in hospital. Shortly after arriving at the hospital her condition deteriorated and she died. The falling concrete had damaged her body too much in order for her to survive. She was only 26 years old. Officially she is body number 93 recovered from the collapsed school. Gerta was engaged to be married and the marriage was scheduled to take place in December. Her fiancé was a secondary school teacher at the same school and he happened to be in the office too at the time of the collapse. The falling concrete killed him. His body was recovered and taken to the morgue. Now the families instead of planning a marriage ceremony will be planning a funeral for this couple. Both of them are Christians and are now together in heaven. Keep the families in prayer as they now make funeral arrangements.
On Saturday the UN and Haitian police secured the areas around the school preventing people access to the site. This gave the rescue teams more room to work and improve access to emergency vehicles. Special rescue teams from Martinique and the United States came in with search dogs and other equipment to look for survivors. On Saturday only 4 survivors were pulled from the rubble. In total 150 people were treated for injuries at the Medecins Sans Frontieres Hospital and also at General Hospital. The residents at this state hospital called off their 4-week strike and treated the injured from the school. We were at the emergency room on Saturday and it was a busy place. The medical staff did all they could to help these children and looked after them well. The people who were in the emergency room during the strike were transferred to the orthopedics department at the hospital. Parents of the school children were searching from hospital to hospital to find word on their missing children. At General Hospital a list was posted outside with names of children who had been treated. At the Medecins Sans Frontieres Hospital, a worker there would search for names on their list as families came seeking for information.
On Sunday Samuel was near the school site along with some other people. A young woman was upset and pleading with the police for help. She had been in cell phone contact with her sister who was a kindergarten teacher at the school and was trapped in the rubble in the lowest level along with her students. She had told her sister that herself and 12 of her students were still alive and within the rubble. There were a lot of Haitian men who wanted the rescue process to speed up and they felt that time was being lost. In the end a large group approached the school site and riot police sent them back. The Haitian people are very determined and were willing to tear down the school by hand. Since Saturday there have been no survivors removed from the rubble. I don’t know what happened to this kindergarten teacher and her students.
The mother who last Friday was waiting for word on her 5 missing children now knows what happened to them. All 5 were killed in the school collapse. 3 of her children were in the philo and rheto classes, which are the last 2 years of secondary school.
We were at General Hospital today and all the students who were in the emergency room have now either been discharged or transferred to other departments in the hospital. The busiest area at the hospital today was the morgue. There were at least 50 people waiting outside making burial arrangements. The government has said that they would help the families with funerals. Samuel’s family will be contacting the mayor’s office in Petionville tomorrow for information. Other schools in the area have offered to take in the displaced surviving students from the La Promesse School. The pastor/owner of the school built the school himself without the assistance of an engineer. The amount of cement and the amount of rebar used was less than what is required. The pastor/owner of the school has been arrested and charged with involuntary homicide and is currently in jail awaiting judicial proceedings. There is still a lot of rubble to remove and the search and body recovery process is ongoing. In the Petionville district where the school was located the mayor has announced that Tuesday and Wednesday are 2 days of mourning for the victims. Pray for the families of all those who lost their lives and for the searchers as they continue to look for survivors and recover bodies. Pray also for the injured who are recovering from their injuries in hospital.
There is a lot going on. I thought that I would send out a mid-week update.
Have a good week!
Karen Bultje, Coram Deo