Haiti Update: Life moves on #HaitiDrDispatch
I received the following from Anil on Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 21:55 ET. I've made minor spelling and grammar corrections and have tried my best to fill in missing words. I've added hyperlinks where I thought they might help.
Playing with a ball near the medical tent
The very first x-ray
Apparently, not everyone got hurt in the earthquake [but] I wouldn't have known it from what I have seen. I saw a young kid playing with his ball amidst the rubble and realized that life moves on no matter the magnitude of the problem. I'm worried that we will move on and forget the external fixtures that protrude from so many legs or a nation full of amputees and without infrastructure. [College classmate and Dr.] Greg Feldman told me he wanted to wrap up his residency in time to contribute to the continued surgical effort later this year, and I thought that is a sign of true valor and concern and commitment.
[Note from Baratunde: Anil sent another photo, but again, I judged it too medically sensitive to post publicly. The comment attached to the image, however, was: "
Decubitus ulcer
is our longer term enemy in handicapped patients as time moves on."]
Anil S Menon Sent from iPhone
--
Anil Menon, MD is a clinical instructor at Stanford School of Medicine focused on surgery and emergency medicine. His research interests are Aerospace Medicine, Emergency Medicine, and Wilderness Medicine. He graduated from Stanford Med in 2006, received a degree in mechanical engineering in 2003 and became a full ER doctor in 2009. He has practiced medicin in combat in Afghanistan and will be practicing aerospace medicine next year at NASA. Menon is a flight surgeon assigned to the 173rd Fighter Wing (F-15s) of the Oregon Air National Guard, and he's part of a team sent to Haiti by Stanford.
This entire series is chronicled under the HaitiDrDispatch tag