Submarine base corpsmen reflect on life-saving efforts in Haiti

Corpsman Shaunteshia Dawson was trying to stop a Haitian woman's head from bleeding on board the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort, a few weeks after the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti, when the woman went into labor.

Dawson helped perform the emergency Caesarean section to deliver a baby girl, 10 weeks early and weighing less than 3 pounds. The infant was taken to the intensive care unit. Lt. Greg Heimall, one of the few nurses there with neonatal training, took over.

The baby was so sick that the medical staff called in a priest and removed the monitors showing the vital signs. Minutes later, the infant's heart rate rose and she began breathing normally.

"Mom ended up taking the baby home, and as far as I know is doing fine - a normal healthy baby," Heimall said.

Dawson, Brian Davis and Cally Carty, hospital corpsmen at the Naval Submarine Base's health clinic, recently returned from almost two months on the hospital ship.

Heimall and Cmdr. Paul Barfknecht, from the Newport, R.I., naval health clinic, also treated patients on the Comfort, which left Baltimore soon after the earthquake and supported relief efforts while anchored off the coast of Port-au-Prince. The Groton and Newport staffers were sent to meet up with the ship for an "open-ended humanitarian mission."

They joined more than 1,000 medical personnel from the U.S. military and various nongovernmental organizations, who treated close to 900 people.

"I was happy to go," said Barfknecht, who led the local group. "That's what we live for, missions like this."

Many patients had broken bones and orthopedic injuries, from falling walls and being trapped in buildings. Others were in respiratory distress after breathing in dust and debris. Some of the injured developed tetanus, a rarity in the United States but the immunization rate is much lower in Haiti.

Barfknecht, a clinical nurse specialist, assessed the patients arriving off the helicopters and stabilized them so they could be taken to the operating rooms or wards.

"We were the busiest trauma center in the world for the first 10 days," he said.

Heimall was in the intensive care unit while Davis and Dawson helped with surgeries in the main operating room, including amputations, spinal fusions and craniotomies. They had the necessary medical instruments but they often ran out of gloves and other surgical supplies used to keep an area sterile.

"This was all trauma, all the time," Davis said.

Carty ran tests in the laboratory despite malfunctioning equipment.

"Our biggest issue was keeping up with the demands of the nurses and the providers," he said. "The air conditioning would turn off and most analyzers require a certain temperature to perform so a lot of our tests were done manually."

"We had one 4-week-old baby that was HIV positive and that was rough," he added. "I'm like, 'What's going on? I thought we were dealing with earthquake victims.'"

Besides working in the lab, Carty also carried bodies from the wards to the morgue.

Heimall was impressed by the resilience of the Haitian people.

"I talked to one lady who lost her whole family, father, mother, husband, brother, sister. She was the only one left but she could still smile and try to talk to us and interact," he said. "I can't even imagine being in that situation, but that just shows how strong people can be."

Haitians with health problems unrelated to the earthquake began arriving on the ship after the initial wave of earthquake survivors, since none of the hospitals on shore were open, Heimall said.

"We became the health care facility for all of Haiti," he said.

Barfknecht said he was incredibly proud to have been part of the mission.

"I think it's the pinnacle of my entire nursing career," said Barfknecht, who served five years as an Army medic and the past 21 years as a Navy nurse. "It'll be hard to beat. I've always wanted to make a difference and I think we did."

"It was good to actually see how our jobs made a direct impact on the relief effort," added Dawson. "Here in the clinic, we see routine stuff. There you see you're saving someone's life."