Emmanuel (God with us)

On Thursday I was having a conversation with someone from our group (can't remember who) about how amazing everything was pulling together at Heartline. The staff volunteering together and making a real medical team was awesome! The relationships we had developed with the USS Comfort, Merlin, Double Harvest and Miami U Field Hospital were so beneficial for our pts and for us knowing we could help facilitate care we just didn't have the ability to offer like x-rays, ortho surgery, skin grafts, ventilators, isolets, etc. We were doing a lot of triaging and them sending pt's to the best possible place we could find for them. And We would trade with them and take pt's needing more long term care and physical therapy. It was so obvious to me that God was working in this effort. He was blessing the 20 years of hard work by John and Beth McHoul. Every time a more critical pt came in it seemed we had the right people on hand. Even I had walked into the clinic that day (just checking in... not to work) and everyone was like "oh your here.... we need an IV in a very dehydrated woman with Malaria" (for a little while they all thought I was the pediatric IV queen.... I am not... I just found it was easier to put IVs in these Haitian people that had no adipose tissue and were vasodilated due to it being 95 degrees) I ended up getting a #24 in her foot which was okay temporarily till we gave her some fluid. But honestly I think God was right alongside me helping me drop these IVs, medicate people, think outside the box and love these people beyond what I thought I was capable of.

So Later that night when I came into work and was getting report from the day shift we learned that two new pt's had come from the USS Comfort and they both had the name Emmanuel.... my eyes almost welled up with tears. Emmanuel Siede was an older man who had Malaria and an old stroke pre-quake.... his sister was his caregiver and amazing. Emmanuel St. Germain was a 3 year old with facial trauma... He was so sweet but also a regular 3 year old. He would jump on your leg while you walked by, dance with his little biscuits hanging out, fight you about taking his meds and putting cream on his face and he gave his mother a run for her money. But I felt like them being in our clinic was a reminder that "God is with us"! It was amazing!