Medical Mission To Haiti Opens Lynn Johnson’s Eyes And Heart

Johnson, owner of White Mountain Physical Therapy and Mountain Multi Fit, took a continuing education class on manipulation, and a couple of months later the director of the course sent out an email asking if he wanted to go with a group on a medical mission to Haiti.

“I’ve always wanted to do that, so I thought this would be a great opportunity,” said Johnson. “I got involved, saw the money it cost, signed up and never looked back. It was an awesome thing.”

Johnson’s group, Phoenix Rising for Haiti, flew to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Friday, Oct. 9, and then to Port-au-Prince. There were six other church or charity groups on the plane going to Haiti to help, and most of them stayed in Port-au-Prince, the epicenter of the 2010 earthquake.

They arrived in Port-au-Prince the following day, but Johnson’s group still had hours of traveling ahead of it to get to Port-de-Paix on the northern part of the island, where the medical compound was located. After a 10-hour bus ride, four hours of that on dirt roads, and a six-hour drive in a speeding car, they arrived at Port-de-Paix. They would spend the next week working and living in a medical compound that was surrounded by a fence with razor wire on the top and a guard to protect them.

They weren’t to leave the compound, but Johnson was able to visit an orphanage and attended church with one of the Haitians he befriended.

“The experience was amazing. It is a third world country; several mornings there was no shower or bathroom facilities because the water was broken or whatever; it was hot,” he said, explaining that they did have fans, but the government turns off the electricity every evening, so food and drink in the refrigerator didn’t stay cold and the fan was off, making for very hot sleeping covered in netting to protect them from mosquitoes.

“People ask if I had fun. It’s not fun,” said Johnson. “Sleeping under a net at night, waking up in a bucket of sweat, viewing the poverty, seeing that type of stuff. No, it’s not fun. It’s pretty heart wrenching to tell you the truth.”

The only luggage he could take was a carry-on bag with clothes for the week. One day he decided he needed to wash some clothes, so he went to a little spigot outside of the house where he washed his hands. He thought he’d get a bucket and wash his clothes in it, but when he began filling the bucket, the water was a yellowish brown. Needless to say, he didn’t wash his clothes.

Johnson noted that in Haiti, if you can’t pay for medical care, they don’t treat you, and while there are some who can afford insurance, most people can’t.

They saw 125 to 145 patients each day. People lined up outside the compound early in the morning for medical care.

There was a porch on the back of the complex, so Johnson would go there in the early morning to cool off, and he could see the roofs of the homes behind the compound. Most were unfinished. The house behind the complex was home to two kids who slept on the roof. Their beds were a sheet or blanket.

He could see children at the house next door outside studying. They speak French and Creole there, and a young girl from the house next door said to Johnson, “I’m hungry,” repeating it several times. He brought granola bars on the trip, so he went down to his sleeping quarters and got three or four. When he came back to the roof, she had climbed the roofs in order to get the food.

Johnson had just come down to start treating one morning when there was a little commotion in the compound courtyard. “I could see they were carrying somebody. A lady had been hit by a motorcycle on the street, and had a bandana around her ankle,” he said. Johnson and a VA nurse practitioner began stabilizing her. “Another guy took the bandage off and the bone was sticking out; she had a compound break.” The lady didn’t have any money so they couldn’t take her to the hospital, so they stabilized her and got the ankle splinted. An orthopedic surgeon visits twice a year, so they sent her to him and he did surgery that afternoon. “Basically, by us doing that, we saved her leg,” he said.

“I had a patient and saw that she needed some shoes,” said Johnson. They had a closet full of shoes people had donated, so he got a couple of pairs he thought were her size. He took them out to her and a 90-year-old woman wanted one of the pairs. The lady Johnson was fitting found a pair that she really liked, but they were too small. He told her they were too small, but she said, “I’ll take them.” She really liked those shoes and didn’t want to give them up. “I went back and brought another pair,” he said. “She was satisfied, but she liked the other pair better.”

Meanwhile, the 90-year-old lady kept grabbing at the shoes for the other lady. She wanted shoes so bad, “In the end, I gave her a pair,” said Johnson.

They took shoes to the orphanage, where only three children got a pair, “but every kid came up and said thank you,” said Johnson.

“One day a Haitian therapist called me over and asked me to look at a lady’s wrist.” She was the last patient of the day, the last night they were there. “I walked over and right away saw it was broken,” he said. They ran some tests, and “when I asked her when she had done this, she told me she had fallen in May. For five months she had a broken wrist, and because she couldn’t afford to go to the hospital, she would see a voodoo doctor.”

Several times Johnson choked up as he shared his experiences.

He offered his thanks to local doctors Steven Washburn and Ronny Ferguson, who are orthopedic surgeons, and Shane Walker of Statclinix Urgent Care for the many supplies they donated. “I took a ton of medicine from their offices. That really helped our clinic,” he said.

“It was a fantastic experience, a lot of work, very uncomfortable compared to what we’re use to here, but amazing, amazing. I’m already applying for my next trip.

“It was an amazing experience, I’m glad I did it, I will do it again. I know not everybody has an opportunity in their life to do something like that, but what a blessing it was for me to go.”