Sisters nurse battles cholera epidemic in Haiti

Nov. 9, 2010, Sisters, Oregon: Do you ever have moments in your life when you can see that many things in your experience have prepared you for just this moment? Now is one of those moments for me. - Cindy Uttley

Uttley recorded those thoughts in her blog after receiving an urgent plea from Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse (SP). They requested she bring her nursing skills and report to the front lines in the escalating battle against cholera in Haiti. She would depart three days later.

Nov. 14, Cholera Treatment Center, Bercy, Haiti: When we arrived this morning to relieve the night shift, all of whom were worn out, we had to quickly adjust our North American standards to third world (or fourth? fifth even?) survival mode. This adjustment can be difficult to say the least. 

Uttley's no stranger to harsh realities and substandard conditions - or spontaneity: She received the Haiti assignment just days after returning from Uganda, where she plays a recurring role on a medical team deployed by Sisters Community Church.

And she's certainly no stranger to Haiti.

Back in the 1980s, Uttley spent two years helping develop a community health program and to open a hospital on the politically tumultuous Caribbean island. She learned the language. She became enamored with the people. And she met future husband David.

Says David, "I was from New York. She lived in California. How else would we have met?"

David spent his first 14 years in Haiti, the son of missionary parents; he speaks Creole fluently. He returned as an adult, meeting Cindy in 1986.

One senses a theme of divine destiny running through their life stories - a progression of experiences culminating in the current hand-in-glove roles they've been called to play this year.

Ever since January's 7.0 earthquake killed 230,000 Haitians, Cindy and David have been like ships of mercy passing in the night.

Amid the rubble in the days immediately following the quake, David spent five weeks with a camera, mostly chronicling the human story among the decimated country of his youth; just two days after his return home, Cindy left for her first nursing assignment with SP. She responded to a variety of medical needs in that initial period of national crisis.

This month she returned to face a different kind of crisis.

The Haitian Ministry of Health recently reported that 1,648 people have died from cholera, over 31,000 have been hospitalized and more than 72,000 overall cases have been confirmed since the outbreak came to light in late October.

SP Director Franklin Graham told Fox News last week that the Haitian government is under-reporting the actual numbers.

Cindy Uttley is too busy fighting on the front lines to count. For the past two weeks she has treated and comforted a perpetual stream of cholera victims during grueling 13-hour shifts.

Nov, 17: Here in Haiti with SP we are fighting a battle. Our visible enemy is irascible, extremely irritable, wrathful, hot tempered, quick to strike. The enemy is cholera.

We fight another battle against a hidden enemy. The enemy of overwhelming inadequacy, fear and discouragement.

The realization that not all will be saved doesn't sit well for some of us.

It takes eight bags of IV fluid per day for three days to treat cholera. It's simply a race against time to get the sick to a rehydration center before they succumb.

Uttley is one of the "Blue Angels," as nurses in SP's three cholera treatment clinics are known. As of last week, SP's facilities have provided care for over 2,700 people.

Among their most heartrending patients are young children, too weak to protest repeated attempts to find a vein that hasn't yet collapsed from dehydration, for an IV drip. First the arm is tried, then the ankle, then the neck. If all else fails, the injection of life-saving fluid is shot straight into the marrow of the shin bone in what's termed "intraocceous infusion."

Nov. 18: Running a 150-bed ICU with a skeleton crew, in the dirt, under tarps, in blistering temperatures. Starting two intraosseous lines and one intravenous line in the same infant. Prepping a fresh corpse. Setting up cots for a steady stream of critically ill patients arriving one right after the other.

To say this work is demanding is an understatement. We seem to take turns letting down our guard and feeling the impact of what we are living through.

Cindy reports that she's pacing herself, buoyed by continual prayer even as she goes about caring for patients.

She found encouragement this week when told by SP's staff epidemiologist that the UN considers five percent an acceptable mortality rate in a cholera treatment center, yet they have been maintaining a rate of 0.7 percent.

Cindy is scheduled to return to Sisters on December 4; David flies back to Haiti on December 6 to cover SP's distribution of 60,000 Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes to needy children there.

"We tag-team," says David. One of the two always remains available to Cindy's 94-year-old mother, who lives with them. "It is hard. We really want to be doing this together. We believe it's what we're supposed to be doing."

But David believes the work his wife is doing is especially invaluable.

"She should be there," he says.

Cindy concurs, saying that if conditions should work out to allow her to extend her term in Haiti, she knows what she would do.

"Haiti has given me so much over the years, and I would love to give back to her. Haiti has given me my husband and a rich family heritage for our sons. I have learned the hard way to not rely entirely on my own resources to meet overwhelming needs, but to lean on the Lord. I have fallen in love with a people that never give up."

The Uttleys have two sons, both Sisters High School graduates: Josh, 21, is a student at Oregon State University. Nate, 19, will soon join the staff of Youth With A Mission in Kona, Hawaii.

Cindy Uttley's blog can be found at http://www.haitiinhis

hands.blogspot.com.