Professor Nurtures Quake Victims

Approximately one week after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, killing thousands and toppling cities, a recent alum called her previous professor's number, hoping to recruit her for a medical relief trip.When Asst. Professor of Nursing Sue McBee got the call from Nurse Practitioner Courtney Finney, she knew she wanted to go, but time was short and classes were just beginning.

"I just kind of sensed that maybe this was something that I was supposed to do, and the only way I could really affirm that was to talk to my dean and say, "Hey, this opportunity's been presented. I'd like to go, but I know that my first responsibility is here." As soon as I talked to Dr. [Patricia] Kraft, she didn't hesitate. She said, "You need to go." And so I talked to the other faculty that I was working with and people pitched in."

McBee then recruited her daughter, Pharmacist Megan McBee Schrock, also a C-N graduate, who had already commented to McBee that she felt a need to go.

Along with ten others, the three joined the team, which was funded in part by the Radio Bible Hour and the Ogle Foundation, and flew out on Jan. 26 to Port-au-Prince. From there, they took a six-hour bus ride to their destination, The Jimani Project Hospital on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

While one half of the team went into the devastated city of Port-au-Prince every day to provide aid, the medical team stayed behind at a previously-unused hospital and orphanage. There was no time to interact only time to sleep, eat, and work. The rewards, however, were greater than everything she gave, she said.

"The day that we left, I didn't want to go," she said. "I knew they still needed so much help. It was just really hard to leave. It was hard to come home. We don't understand how blessed we are, how fortunate we are."

With her hands over her heart and tears in her eyes, McBee shared how deeply moved she was by the suffering and strength of the Haitian people.

"I was just amazed at the people. I don't know that I've ever seen the human suffering - I know I haven't - that I experienced as a whole with this group because people were not only in pain because of the different problems that they were having, broken bones and so on, but the loss of family," McBee said.

"Some of them had lost children, some of them had lost parents, some of them had lost brothers and sisters. It was a horrific tragedy."

Overwhelmed by the suffering and faced with fourteen and fifteen-hour night shifts, McBee said that she knew she needed supernatural strength.

"I just prayed for strength, but as I watched God work, I saw a resilient people group," she said.

The conditions were primitive and most of the injuries were large breaks and fractures where the people had been crushed beneath rubble. While the electricity was on on in the hospital's surgical suites, the orphanage where her patients lay went without. Until the surgeons were finished for the day, McBee and the others used flashlights.

"Patients were like a mattress here, and then you might could put your foot in-between that and the next mattress. So you were just really stepping over people to get to people. There were that many people that needed care," she said. "We had people in tents. We had people up the sidewalk. We had people in rooms. They were just everywhere."

On one occasion, she recalled when she and three others were responsible for the care of 60 patients.

"Every day we ended up with more and more patients. Just to get around, it was very, very difficult," Mcbee said.

"We certainly did the best we could under the circumstances and I know the patients appreciated the effort. We not only ministered to them from a physiological standpoint, but we prayed with our patients even though they couldn't understand us."

The physical needs were great, the tasks demanding, and the time limited.

"We had a lot of fractured pelvises. We had many amputations. We had little babies with little casts on. It was anywhere from a few months to people in their seventies or eighties," she said.

For McBee, the opportunity to help was a blessing. She is already planning a return trip with Professor of Biology Patsy Boyce and mainly medical students in May.

"It seems a travesty to me to be blessed like we have and not share with other people, especially in a situation that I experienced there," she said. "The revelations that God gives through experiences like that, it just solidifies your faith and your trust.