Ken and I left Deschapelles at 8am and embarked on a 6.5 hour journey. It was supposed to be a 3.5 - 4 hour drive, but the Port-au-Prince traffic had a different idea in mind. Every time we asked the driver how much longer it would be, he answered “thirty minutes”. It got to be humorous when he would say “thirty minutes”, thirty minutes after he said “thirty minutes”. But we finally arrived around 2:30pm and setup a casting area behind the church. By 3pm we began casting. Jill and Seneq helped setup the patients’ charts, then left to meet with another prosthetic group in the area.
The Johanniter group has been in Leogane for some time, but they have limited resources to handle the demand. They discussed how we could assist them with their patient load, and provide services to a back log of over 140 patients. Unfortunately, their limited resources only allow them to treat 6 patients per month. We may be able to help this group by providing the initial prosthesis to the majority of their patients and allow them to more efficiently continue with vital long term follow up care.
Ken and I continued non-stop with the castings for four hours. We took a break long enough to down half a bottle of Sprite, then we were back to it. By the time we got to the last two patients, we ran out of daylight. We moved around the corner of the building so we would be directly in front of our vehicle. My last cast of the evening was of an above-knee amputee by car headlight, yet another first in my career.
The final tally of casts were 8 below-knees, 10 above-knees (two of which were for a bilateral AK), 2 bent knees, and 3 partial feet. 23 casts in all. Not a bad days work, but I was beat and ready for bed. Good thing it is only “thirty minutes” back to our hotel…
