St. Louis and Sony at the ICU - Kim Jinhee
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In Haiti Kkottongnae, there are inpatient
admission buildings called ‘Sante,(ICU)’ where ten women and ten men receive
treatments in separate buildings. Most of them are there because they were
abandoned on a street or in some corner of the National Hospital.
I met Nicola there when I visited Kkottongnae
last year. Nicola was a young man who was paralyzed from his waist to his toes.
He was tall and had terrible, huge sores on his hips, sacrum, ankles and knees.
When he was found by the Kkottongnae congregation, the sores were already
advanced into the muscles, tendons and bones, necrotizing the tissue. A
gray-colored discharge dripped from his wounds when I changed the dressing.
Also at ‘Sante,(ICU)’ was Jonas. A ten-year-old
boy found between the garbage dumpsters at the National Hospital, Jonas was
riddled with cancer. It had started in his left eye and from there spread over
his whole body. He was unable to sleep without narcotic pain medicine during
the last days of his life. And he died coughing up blood. Br. John said to me
that he had asked God why He had to take Jonas in such a painful way. And I
could feel his deep sorrow over the boy Jonas’s death.
Before I met Saint Louis, another patient at ‘Sante,(ICU)’,
Sr. Matthias and Br. John told me about
him. “Only half of his face is left,”
they said. At the time, I was waiting for him so I could change the dressing on
his face. Then I saw a man with much of his face wrapped in white bandages
coming around the corner of the building. I asked him to sit in the chair in
front of me. As I was about to set the dressing supplies on a table, a nurse
brought me a dressing bowl which had red stickers “SIDA” on. The stickers meant
that Saint Louis was an AIDS patient. Sr. Matthias said they were still waiting
for the final results but that he was put on AIDS precaution based on his own
statement. Before I left Kkottongnae, Saint Louis received the final diagnosis
of AIDS. Sr. Matthias said that she could now register him with the health
department and receive medication for him.
Before I unwrapped the bandages covering much
of his face, I asked Saint Louis if he was in pain. He said in Creole, “A
little, but it’s OK”. Before I began to unwrap his face, I paused just long
enough to ask Jesus to help me to not inadvertently show my own discomfort at
seeing his ailment. With the bandages removed, I saw that half of his face was
gone—only a large hole, oozing and dripping blood, remained where the side of his
face had once been. I sprayed saline with a syringe so it would reach deep into
the wound. Then I packed the wound with gauze and wrapped that half of his face
in bandages. He asked me to tape the edges of the bandages in order to better
keep out flies that might be looking for somewhere to lay their eggs. So I did.
Saint Louis’s pain got worse with each passing
day, so Sr. Matthias began injecting pain medication directly into the skin
around the wound. While she did this, Saint Louis held my hand, squeezing and
twisting it tightly from the great pain cause by these injections. I felt
helpless. There was nothing I could do to ease his pain or help his wound to
heal faster. My sorrow for Saint Louis grew deeper and darker.
Sony was also an AIDS patient. His legs were
paralyzed, and he had large sores on both hips and ankles. There was a lot of
discharge from the sores and they looked very bad. But Sr. Matthias said his
sores were slowly getting better. I could see some small white patches on his
legs, which indicated new skin from healing. One morning when I walked into ‘Sante,(ICU).
, he looked like he was in a great deal of pain. Fr. Thaddaeus said he was
defecating. Later, I checked his stool but it was not hard. I felt sorry for
Sony having such painful tribulations. But he always kept a smile on his face.
And whenever I called his name he replied with a happy grin. There was a
language barrier between us, but it did not matter at all. I routinely turned
him left and right to change his dressing and diapers. He always said “Merci”
with a big smile on his face when I was finished.
One morning, I was busy changing Sony’s
dressing with him turned onto his left side. Before I finished the task, a
nurse brought in a breakfast bowl and left it beside his pillow so he could eat
after the dressing was changed. But Sony was so hungry that he started eating
with his fingers while I was still changing dressing. I felt grateful that he
had a good appetite and liked to eat. I’m sure he will recover from the terrible
sores that plague him. In spite of his ailment, Sony was strong enough to keep
smiling, even when faced with unwanted and terribly difficult situations in his
life.
I watched the pain of these poor souls for
seven days. And it seemed so unfair. They didn’t deserve the extreme pain and
difficulties that gripped their lives. And I could not help but feel that we
may not deserve to possess all the materials and luxuries that they do not
have. How, when someone is suffering, is it possible to just walk by and
pretend they do not even exist? To me, these poor souls seem to suffer just
as Jesus did, carrying a cross and doing penance for us all. During my stay at
Kkottongnae, I prayed to God to give His strength Saint Louis and to Sony. And
I will continue to pray to God that he might bless them with His mercy so they
might have a life without pain.
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