Saving Jaqueline’s Life

Today’s update will be about a medical emergency we had at the JRF involving Jaqueline, a 20 year old young woman who is the daughter of the JRF cook, a former JRF student and current Good Threads stitcher.

Jaqueline with two of her sibling, she is in the middle.

Jaqueline had been sick for about a week.  She had a high fever, was a bit delirious and was screaming out in pain periodically, the pain was coming from her diaphragm/upper gastrointestinal area. She developed a fever on Sunday and went to the local public hospital that night as the private hospital was closed. The public hospital in Jacmel is a total joke, responsible for more deaths than any gangster/politician in Haiti and does not provide what could accurately be termed medical care. They tested her for AIDS and pregnancy and then gave her an IV and sent her home.  I thought that would be the end of it and assumed she would get better.

On Thursday night I sat down to eat dinner with my boys and they were talking about Jaqueline. They were saying that she was still screaming out in pain, that she was super hot to the touch and that her mom, Tania, the JRF cook, was going to take her to Northern Haiti to see a Voodoo Priest. In Haiti people believe that many sicknesses are mystical in nature and that doctors cant help them. Voodoo priests often have strong knowledge of herbs and natural remedies that they will give people, along with using their “magic”, to help them heal. The Haitians that the JRF brought from Haiti are mostly from Northern Haiti and they believe that the Voodoo Priests in Northern Haiti are better at magic than the southern Voodoo Priests. In Voodoo there is a difference between a Voodoo Priest and a Witch Doctor, Voodoo Priests can do good and bad, where as witch doctors only deal in deceptions and curses.

After hearing the boys talk about Jaqueline I decided that I needed to go get her and take her to the local private hospital. We have saved at least 2 children of the JRF’s lives and have had one child who died when he should not have because I was naïve enough to trust the “doctors” and “nurses” at the local barrio health clinic. The weight of that failure is not something I am looking to take on again. I got to the JRF land where Jaqueline lived and went to see her.  Her brother was loudly and emotionally chanting to give her “protection” and drive away any bad sprits. Her Aunt was invoking Jesus’s name and power by her bed to do the same and some other woman was yelling either in grief or another attempt at protective magic. Situations like this always bring me back to the boy we lost and make me emotional. However, I am the leader of the community and I feel like it is my responsibility to keep a calm head and project calm in such situations. Going into her house and seeing her brought tears to my eyes but I held them back and avoided eye contact for a minute or so until my eyes dried out. I told Tania that we were going to take Jaqueline to the local private hospital and that the JRF would pay for the treatment. Her mother Tania does not really believe in western medicine and was hesitant at first as she thought taking Jaqueline to the Voodoo Priest in the North was the best idea. I told her that if the private hospital didn’t find anything wrong with her than she could take her to the North but if she were to try to take her to the North before going to the local hospital there was a real chance Jaqueline would die before arriving. She agreed but told her husband and some others that the IV had made Jaqueline worse and to not let the doctors give her an IV.

I loaded Jaqueline into the truck along with my wife and 2 of Jaqueline’s neighbors. About a dozen other members of the JRF community got on motorcycles and followed us. We got to the private hospital and were in luck to find it open. I told the doctor her symptoms and he said that he would check her out and then we would wait on the other doctor to arrive who was late for their shift and necessary for the required paperwork to get her admitted. After checking her out he agreed with me that she needed to be hospitalized as she was dehydrated, had too high of a fever and was clearly losing her battle with whatever sickness she had.  The missing staff member finally arrived and the doctor started writing her a prescription and filling out her chart.  I went to talk to Jaqueline about IV’s, how they were only water, would help with her fever, extremely important and how she would be getting one.  After talking to Jaqueline I went back to talk to the main doctor and found him yelling at all of the people had come with me and were waiting right by the doorway.  They had told the Doctor that Jaqueline’s mom and grandma did not want her to get an IV. The doctor was saying that if that was the case then they could treat her and he was going home. I immediately yelled at the people who had followed about how they were doing harm, not good, for Jaqueline and that the doctor wouldn’t come tell them how to stitch so they should not tell him how to treat a sick patient and made them leave the area. I assured the doctor their opinions on the subject did not matter and that Jaqueline would be getting IV’s and he agreed to continue treating Jaqueline as long as only I and one other lady who had come with me spoke with him. Jaqueline’s step father came to speak with me about going against Jaqueline’s mother and grandmothers wishes and I told him I would talk to Tania(her mother). I explained to Tania my confidence that the IV would help and my confidence that only ignorance and the bad decisions that accompany it would kill Jaqueline. She agreed to let Jaqueline stay in the hospital and get IV’s. By the next day Jaqueline had a diagnosis, gastritmecrosit in Kreyol, which I believe has to do with dead tissue in her upper GI tract. She stayed in that hospital for another 3 days before being released. She is now fully recovered. If it were not for the finances and leadership of the JRF Jaqueline would have probably died. This all happened at the same time that game 1 of the NFL season was starting, I suspected it was a sign that the Lions would have a good year but that hasn’t worked out.

Thanks to our donors we were able to pay for quality medical care and made a full recovery and god willing will continue to thrive with a good job and real safety net for herself and her family. As always we want to thank you all for your continued support, none of this would be possible without you.

Sincerely,
David and the JRF Community