Duncan Miles, MD Trip Report

The following post was authored by Duncan Miles, a Plastic Surgeon in Redlands, California.  Dr Miles has volunteered in Haiti on more than one occasion and can be seen below performing a burn contracture release with Dr Terry Dietrich in 2008.

On my trip to Cap Haitien in 2009, I first met Chantelle, a little girl with terrible burn contractures involving her right arm and both hips...she was profoundly disabled and walked as if she was sitting in a chair.  We began to lay plans that day for Duncan to start working on her.

When I saw Chantelle this March, I couldn't believe it was the same child...she was smiling and could walk normally thanks to the skills of Dr Miles and other volunteers who performed multiple surgical procedures on her over the past few months.  Chantelle is pictured below with Pete and Zach.

Drs Matt Hiersche, Jason Mussman and myself left for Port au Prince on March 7 and returned on the 14th. We arrived at the hospital at 2:00 pm Monday and were operating by 3:30 that day. After our last operation on Saturday we had done 26 cases ranging from skin grafting and amputations to mastectomies and laparotomies. We had treated 2 month olds to 95 year-olds and two American physicians.

We saw some horrendous wounds and heard heartbraking stories yet saw triumph in the face of adversity. We met a man who had a head injury during the earthquake who recovered after 24 hours and realized his sister was missing. He recruited friends, found her in the rubble and dug her out a day later. She lost her left hand but survived.  Seven weeks later he was still at her bedside.

We were told of a man who brought his twelve year-old daughter to the hospital to have her femur fracture fixed so he could sell her in the sex trade. We saw mothers with newborns begging for  tents as they had no place to sleep. We saw a mother arrive at the hospital carrying her son  on her back. He was wasting away from an unknown disease. She’d been carrying him for weeks looking for someone to help them. We saw children flying kites made out of garbage bags and playing with cars made out of Gatorade bottles.

We met Haitians and volunteers from all over the globe working side by side:  feeding the hungry, fixing the plumbing, donating supplies, organizing volunteers, caring for the sick, cleaning the hospital, sterilizing instruments, providing a power supply,  providing pastoral care and providing shelter.

I was humbled by the generosity of spirit and endurance of those who provided services.  I met some who had been tirelessly working since the quake. I was equally amazed by Haitians’ will to survive and  their drive to rebuild their lives and communities. Some lost entire families.

You can download and play a movie on iTunes made by team member Matt Hiersche, a first-year Plastic Surgery Resident at Loma Linda University.  The video shows some of the conditions and patients treated during their time of service at Hopital Adventiste d'Haiti.