Nation in distress leaves lasting impact on Yakima aid workers

They were brought in with broken legs and arms and spines. There were babies with scalp injuries and wounds. Several people were paralyzed. And there were so many amputees.

These were the patients that a Yakima medical team saw during a recent two-week mission trip to the Dominican Republic and its earthquake-ravished neighbor, Haiti.

"It's all going to hit us in the days to come," said Jan Brazeau, a registered nurse who helped lead the team from a Gleed church. "It was an amazing privilege to help people in this horrible distress. To just be there for a few minutes to give them something of ourselves, of love and physical care ...

"We stepped into their world, and now we know what they're going through: the starvation, the suffering, the physical pain."

On Sunday, a day after their return to Yakima, Brazeau and others described the crisis conditions unlike anything they'd ever experienced.

An estimated 200,000 people died in the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. Tens of thousands more were injured. In the hours and days and weeks after, people from around the world arrived to the tiny Caribbean nation to offer medical and other relief.

Two groups from Gleed's Memorial Bible Church were among them.

"The first week, I slept maybe 10 hours total," recalled Tallie McClary, a 35-year-old cardiac nurse. "I worked nights and was supposed to sleep during the day, but it was next to impossible.

"It was bright. Loud people were everywhere. There were helicopters coming in with more patients. And tremors would shake you out of your boots."

The team of 18 medical professionals -- three others spent their time in a Dominican sugar cane village -- spent much of the time caring for Haitian refugees at a hospital in Jimani, a border city in the Dominican Republic and about an hour east of Port-au-Prince.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic are neighboring countries that share the island of Hispaniola.

Patients were laid out side by side on thin mattresses on the ground, under plastic and canvas tarps and tents outside the hospital.

"I started I don't know how many IVs," McClary said. "I was on the ground, in the dirt with a headlamp on or someone shining a flashlight on me...

"The quality of care that we give in America stood out to me glaringly ... We demand so much of ourselves, our patients' care and hygiene and sterilization and comfort. All of those things are taken for granted when you see how it is in other countries in crisis."

Working with earthquake victims was not part of the original plan, said Brian Taylor, one of the church's pastors.

For months, two groups planned a trips to the Dominican Republic to build an addition to a tiny church in a sugar cane village and provide basic medical clinics.

Then the disaster happened.

"Nobody on the teams originally signed up for this," Taylor said. "More than anything, I'm exceptionally proud of everybody for working outside their comfort zone, just doing whatever it took to get the job done."

Brazeau said her patients seemed so much stronger than she could ever be in their situation.

"Most of us would have died from the shock, I think," she said. "But they kept saying they were thankful for us and thankful to be alive. One lady, before she died, said, 'Thank you, I love you,' in Creole over and over again to the aid workers."

Taylor said he was struck by the stories of terror and hurt.

"Some of them told their story through a translator. Some through this incredible sorrow in their eyes or their shrieks of pain," he said. "One individual shared his story through drawing ...

"And we were simply there to be the hands and feet of Jesus, that's it."

* Melissa Sánchez can be reached at 509-577-7675 or msanchez@yakimaherald.com.