By Jocelyn Murray Staff Writer
Even though life has continued to proceed as normal here at Loyola University Maryland, life for the Haitians affected by the earthquake this past January will not return to normal for months. Fortunately for the people of Haiti, they have dedicated men and women, such as Sister Karen Schneider of Johns Hopkins University, who spend their entire lives helping developing countries in various ways. This past Monday, Sister Karen spoke to an overcrowded audience in the basement of Knott Hall, telling Loyola students, faculty and administration about the work she had just been doing in Haiti post-catastrophe. "This is good for me to do - it is sort of a therapy session for me. I get therapy and can inform you all of what's been going on at the same time," reflected Sister Karen. Sister Karen, who specializes in pediatric medicine, has traveled to Haiti over 20 times participating in relief work and had another trip planned on January 16. Days before she and her group were scheduled to leave, the 7.0-earthquake struck the tiny nation. Sister Karen and crew were finally able to travel down to begin their work the Friday after the devastation. "Everything was in rubble…place after place that we went, just rubble everywhere," said Sister Karen referring to the devastation that she saw upon her arrival. As she began her slide show, she shared some surprising statistics of the Haitian population; for example, the life expectancy of a Haitian is 47.4 years compared to 77 years for an American. With over 200 orphans killed immediately following the earthquake, there was literally, a pile up of children who needed immediate and severe medical attention. With no hospitals to use of their own, the United Nations transformed two of their huge storage tents in hospitals. Sister Karen described the conditions in which they were administering care and performing medical procedures: "Basically, there was one foot between each cot, with four rows of cots, each 40 cots deep. And only the patients got cots, we did not." On day five that they were there, the pediatric team converted two desks donated by UN officials into operating tables where they began carrying out surgeries and amputations. "We got there and hit the ground running. It was 30 hours or more before any of us got a wink of sleep those first few days," she said referring to the intensity of the work they were performing. With limited resources, she described how people were using doors that had survived the quake as stretchers and were pulling people out of the wreckage by the hundreds. "The longer the days went, the sicker the incoming patients got," she said. Since they were stuck in wreckage for days on end and afflicted with puncture or crush wounds, the affects of these injuries started to take a toll on the whole person. On day four, before any anesthesiologists arrived, they preformed two amputations to save lives; both victims ended up dying due to related causes. On day five, there were 15 amputations in the children's tents alone - 22 amputations on day six. Most of these amputations were life-saving surgeries. As she progressed into her PowerPoint presentation, Sister Karen revealed vivid pictures of the crush injuries and infections people were suffering. These images greatly depicted the immense pain they all people - victims and relief workers - must have been feeling. Unfortunately for many of the late-arriving children, their wounds had progressed so much that it was too late to try and reverse the effects. Amputation was the only option. As she began to connect personally with the children, Sister Karen got a peek into what their lives would be like post-earthquake. Many of them were separated from their parents who had no way of finding them or had perished. They were going to have to continue living their lives in a society where physical deformities were looked down upon. "A lot of schools won't accept deformities in children in Haiti; however I think this will change since a majority of the children will now have deformities," Sister Karen said of the environment that the children were going to be left in once the caring and friendly nurses and pediatricians from the United States had left. The severity of the living conditions in Haiti were also revealed to the relief workers who lived the reality themselves. "We had one sleeve of saltines for a small group of us and a jar of peanut butter and we ate that twice a day and we still had more food than the patients," described Sister Karen. Bringing her presentation to a close, Sister Karen described how it wasn't only the relief workers that were traveling to Haiti that were helping the victims; other Haitians who were less severely impacted by the earthquake were doing their part in giving aid to their countrymen. Her long-time friend from Haiti, "PaPa," started his own relief effort called "PaPa's Bus." Owning his own bus, PaPa fit 75 Haitians in a bus that he drove from Port au Prince, the center of the devastation, north to Cap Haitian. He did the trip on his own twice, completely emptying his life savings in order to bring these people away from the damage. Upon her brief return to the United States, Sister Karen is collecting donations to help pay for gas, which now runs $25/liter in Haiti, for PaPa to run his bus and to pay school fees for the displaced children in Cap Haitian. As the presentation ended, the room erupted in applause for this woman who is dedicated to the saving the lives and serving others. For information on how to help fund Sister Karen's relief work or to donate to Hounds for Haiti, please visit the CCSJ office or their website www.loyola.edu/ccsj/supporthaiti.
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