GUEST BLOGGER - KELSEY BERLIN

Today's guest blogger is Kelsey Berlin, a 4th year medical student who grew up in Columbus. Here is her story:
How do I even begin to describe my first medical mission trip? For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in medical missions. God has been tugging at my heart for years and I have wanted to see if this would just be a onetime trip with me running the other way, or if medical missions would be a part of my career in the future.  When the opportunity to travel to Haiti with Columbus Medical Mission Team presented itself, I couldn’t sign up fast enough and I am glad I did. 

Kelsey with Dr. Carlson doing a procedure. 

Now that it’s over, reflecting and being completely honest, I’m not sure if I helped change the lives of Haitians or if they changed my life even more.  If I could summarize the trip in one phrase it would be “Catch 22” -- the happiness of being able to minister to many patients and offer a surgery that would change their lives forever or the sadness of not being able to help other patients because their disease was too advanced. 

Look at the spine on the far left.  This was a 17 year old boy who broke his neck diving.  He had a high fever and had infection all through his body.  We sent him home with no treatment.  He was paralyzed from the shoulders down and barely breathing. He may not have lasted the rest of the day.  It was heartbreaking for us all.

In case anyone was wondering, Haiti is HOT, so HOT!!  I started sweating as soon as we arrived and I’m not sure I ever stopped.  But that cold shower at the end of the day was better than any shower I’ve had at home.  One thing I was hoping for the week was maybe a little Haiti diet, i.e., I probably won’t like the food and lose a pound or two, but the food was good, so no such luck there.   I could have done without the mangoes dropping on our house in the middle of the night sounding like a small cannon going off, but they sure tasted good in the morning!

Breakfast always included mangoes, banana and pineapple.

We worked hard in Haiti. I am not sure I have been so exhausted after a week of work and felt so rewarded at the same time.  I have never seen so many large tumors. Large thyroid tumors that were obstructing a patient’s ability to move their neck, jaw tumors that had taken over a patient’s whole mouth, a facial tumor that had paralyzed a man’s face and doubled the size of his face.  Thankfully we were able to remove multiple tumors and the patients did well and were so thankful for our help. Unfortunately, some of the tumors were just too big and all we could do was biopsy the tumor to have a correct diagnosis and ask the patient to come back to see a different surgeon with the next mission team. 

We think this was a salivary gland malignancy.  We took a biopsy, but it went deep into the neck and looked inoperable.

The most rewarding case I was able to take part in was repairing the cleft lip of a beautiful baby boy. Knowing that one surgeon will so drastically affect him and his family is a feeling that I cannot put into words. This is an example of why I chose medicine as a career.   Unfortunately, another cleft lip surgery was cancelled when the baby girl could not handle the anesthesia well and we didn’t feel comfortable moving forward. Again, a Catch 22. 

The case that affected me the most was a 24 year old female in status asthmaticus--  an asthma attack that would not break. The patient came to our ER early in the morning. She had been having a difficult time breathing for days and finally came to see us. Although her oxygen level was very poor,we were able to improve her condition with medicine and oxygen. However, this improvement was only moderate and we did not feel comfortable sending her home, so she was admitted to our hospital.  After more medicine, she was still not improving. Now she was even showing signs of using accessory muscles to breathe. This is a bad sign. It means that she was tiring out and was having a hard time moving air in and out of her lungs.  We gave her all the medicines we thought could even make a slight difference and watched her very closely all day.  Just after midnight, after over 18 hours of watching her struggle to breath, we decided she was too tired and not able to breathe reliably on her own. We took her to the OR to put in a breathing tube that would guarantee we could control her airway.  In the US, she would have been put on a ventilator and watched in an Intensive Care Unit.  In Haiti, we did not have access to a ventilator so someone had to manually pump air from a bag into the breathing tube every 6 seconds. This meant we stayed up all night breathing for her. By the next morning, we knew she would need to be transferred to a bigger hospital with better resources. In Pierre Payan, we were not even able to run a basic blood test such as electrolytes.  Thankfully, we had a paramedic on our team who converted a 15 passenger van into an ambulance so the patient could be transported to Port-au-Prince, almost two hours away.  We were able to somewhat stabilize her but her prognosis was grave. 

Kelsey helping with the transfer. 

The wondering of what we could have done differently or sooner or if we had been in the US was heavy.  It felt like we didn’t or couldn’t do enough.  This feeling was hard to carry around after being at her bedside for nearly 24 hours and being exhausted, but a so much better feeling followed the next day when we heard that our patient had turned the corner and the breathing tube was removed! Yes! She was going to live! The relief was the best feeling I have had yet in medicine, and it is because of that feeling that I know I will be doing more medical mission trips in the future.  

The trip to OSAPO.  www.osapo.org

Thank you Columbus Medical Mission Team for all you are doing around the world. And, a big thank you to all of you who have supported them financially.