Barre surgeon heads for Haiti, new challenges
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Dr. Christopher Meriam, an orthopedic surgeon discusses his plans to travel to Haiti to give medical assistance to earthquake victims. He left Friday on his mission. STEFAN HARD/TIMES ARGUS |
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By Peter Hirschfeld Vermont Press Bureau - Published: February 8, 2010
BERLIN – As an orthopedic surgeon with extensive trauma experience, Dr. Chris Meriam has seen his share of horrific emergency-room injuries.
But even Meriam isn't sure what to expect when he enters his latest rotation – a week-long shift at a hospital in Haiti serving thousands of the country's earthquake survivors.
"I don't really have any reference in my life to prepare me for it," Meriam says. "You can read about it. You can listen to what other people have said. But there's just no way to know until you do it."
Meriam is one of three doctors at Green Mountain Orthopaedic Surgery, a private practice located on the campus of the Central Vermont Medical Center.
The 7.0-magnitude quake struck the island nation as Meriam was vacationing in the Caribbean. Upon his return, the University of Vermont-educated doctor decided he wanted to help.
"It just occurred to me that it would be a good thing to do if I could," he says.
Meriam, 49, lives in Barre with his wife and two teenage children. He departed for Haiti on Friday. He'll spend a week at a hospital in Jacmel, a resort city about 90 minutes southwest of Port-au-Prince. The hospital clinic is now seeing about 3,000 people each day. Meriam will be called upon to perform life- and limb-saving surgery on some of the most severely wounded patients.
"I've seen trauma in the United States," says Meriam. "But it's very different being a trauma surgeon in the U.S."
Doctors here, he says, can draw on state-of-the-art equipment and a robust support staff. And trauma injuries, he says, are generally treated within hours or even minutes after their occurrence.
In Haiti, by contrast, some casualties have gone virtually untreated in the weeks following the quake, according to news reports out of Port au Prince, complicating already serious bone-breaks and other blunt-trauma injuries.
"It's going to be very different over there," he says. "I'm sure there's going to be stuff I've never seen. We usually don't see people that badly infected."
Thanks to donations and pharmacy discounts, Meriam will bring thousands of doses of antibiotics and hundreds of tetanus vaccines. The situation in Haiti is such that even the most basic commodities are in short supply. Meriam will bring a 40-pound box of paper, along with clipboards, pens, scrub hats, IV tubing and needles.
Outbreaks of typhoid, tetanus and measles in tent camps scattered around the city will only complicate matters further. Meriam says he'll likely be called upon to perform procedures and treat conditions outside his area of expertise.
"I'm thinking I'm going to have to go be a doctor – not just be an orthopedic surgeon," he says. "I'm going to have to remember a lot of things about caring for medical problems that I haven't cared for in awhile, which is okay."
Meriam says he'll also have to come to grips with outcomes that would be considered a failure in Vermont. Amputations here, he says, generally reflect a failure of medical care. In Haiti, he says, they may be the only life-saving option.
"It's a different mindset," he says. "I have to prepare myself to think differently about what I'm doing."
There's some fear to conquer as well, he says. Entering Haiti – a hospital especially – means he'll come in contact with viruses and disease that are rarely part of the medical landscape in Vermont.
"There's a lot of disease, a lot of illness," he says. "My biggest is fear is there's a lot of HIV, and I'd certainly hate to contract that."
But the trip, Meriam, says, has helped remind him why he wanted to be a doctor in the first place.
"I still believe in my heart that most people go into medicine as a career because they have a sense of wanting to help people," he says. "It's easy to lose that after years of training and working hard. But this trip for me has been a refresher. That's why I chose this path – because you can help people."
Meriam will chronicle his experiences on a blog, which can be accessed by visiting www.cvmc.org.
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