Putting Pain in Perspective


Titi me maryaj, maryaj la mizerab
Manmanm mouri maladi, papam mouri maladi

Mayiango eya, mayiango fe woch mache.

Ooo ooo mayiango fe woch mache

 

(This is the wedding, the wedding is miserable.

My mother dies from the sickness,

my dad dies from the sickness.

Mayiango makes the rock move.)


–Haitian children’s folk song


Excerpt from Chapter 10: “Resentment, Fear, and Pain” 


Night had fallen and the compound was quiet. The church was locked up, clinic finished for the day, and I was relaxing in the clear Haitian night air with the orphans. We were all together, in the dirt under the illuminated heavens, chanting the grim children’s folk song. The game we played while singing it involved squatting in a circle and passing small stones in cadence with the song’s rhythm, left to right. The objective was to avoid losing control of the circling rocks as they moved ever more quickly while the song’s tempo increased. One by one, players would mess up and get knocked out. The winner of the game was the last one able to maintain control of the final stone. The prize for that night’s winner was my last Clif Bar, which would, for a brief moment, ease one starving child’s hunger pain. 


The trips I have made over the years to Haiti for medical missions have served as a reminder to me of the reality of pain: what pain is, can be, and should be. Living alongside and helping care for Haitian villagers and orphans who live simpy....




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Frank Gallagher?

Image
I r ecently rediscovered TV after months of not even turning my set on. The show that has currently hooked my attention, and that I recently began to binge watch, has been Shameless with William H. Macy and Joan Cusack, about a big dysfunctional family living and struggling in Chicago’s rough South Side. It is a hybrid of drama and dark comedy. Both the character of Frank Gallagher as well as the narrative holds true to the show’s name- each episode is saturated with drugs, violence, and gratuitous fucking (too much, in my opionion, even for a Showtime original). Macy does a great job portraying an alcoholic deadbeat, good-for-nothing, scheming drunk who is completely inept as a father. What the viewer can also glean is that even through his stumbling, bumbling ways, Frank is smart - he seems to eloquently lie and scheme his way into money, sex, and his family’s attention, waxing poetic to get what he wants most of the time. His character both resonates and alarms me, and as I watch hi
Read more

Nothing Comes Before It

Image
As we have now put a dent in 2021, and my bloggerlust is slowly awakening- partially from topic inspiration, partly on the encouragement of my dear one- I recognize that these twelve months have the potential to surpass my wildest permutation of the future. Six weeks ago I rang in the new year with an entirely new (and completely unexpected)  magical pouch brimming with hope and exciting prospects, and as we turn a snowy corner towards spring, many of those prospects are coming to fruition. Work is stable, my physical and mental health continue their upward trajectory, and I am hopelessly and willingly steeped in an amazing new relationship, the bliss of which is gloriously transcendent. My existence appears to be humming along on all cylinders. I finally feel like I've got this “life thing” down. Danger, JD! You are so busy celebrating yourself, gleefully patting yourself on the back that you are subtly distancing yourself from the original source of your stability and growth in y
Read more

Intubating Alcoholics

Image
In the past week I have put three alcoholics on life support. The first one was 39 years old. He arrived to the emergency department by EMS unconscious with almost no blood pressure. I placed my ultrasound probe on his heart and saw it was beating alright,  just very little blood was entering his ventricles. This is because he was bleeding to death. When I intubated him I saw pooled blood in the back of his throat. His liver was so far gone, so cirrhotic, that blood could not easily pass through it, and the backup and created high vein pressures on sensitive areas like his esophagus and stomach, whose linings themselves were eroded from the caustic effects of constant boozing. He was literally hemorrhaging internally, and it took many units of blood to even get a pressure back. He made it to the ICU, and later that night, died. We later learned from family that he had moved back to town "to get sober." Case two was  a 53 year old chronic alcoholic who came to me con
Read more