PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

The Baltimore Sun has an interesting and moving story today about the first day on station of the USNS Comfort, which arrived off Port au Prince and began taking patients Wednesday morning (1.20.10) Here is a clip from that story.

”...the human reality of what the crew will face - and what Haitians have struggled with for a week - became evident on one of Wednesday's first flights.

He was a young Haitian whose crusting burns covered his head, concealing most of his features. The man told doctors and nurses that he was a school bus driver and was pumping gas when the earthquake hit - and the pump exploded. For six days his wife treated him at home by drizzling cold water over his burns, which showed signs of infection by the time he reached the Comfort.

In the ship's operating room, doctors had to make a decision. To save one of his hands, they would need to set him on a long-term course of treatment, including skin grafts, multiple surgeries and therapy. Since he almost certainly could not get that kind of care in Haiti, the alternative was amputation.

The Comfort's crew arranged an emergency medical flight that will take him to a burn center, perhaps the one at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, which treats combat injuries,

The man, who was anesthetized to clean his wounds and could not consent to having his name used, was a conspicuous example of Haiti's suffering, but hardly the only example.

As he was being wheeled into surgery, the elevators opened to reveal a man with amputated fingers and a woman who seemed to have miscarried. They were wheeled into the ship, past the seemingly lifeless baby, into spaces vacated by the old man with a neck collar and the young woman who never seemed to move.

THE LINK:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bal-md.hs.comfort21jan21,0,4154306.story

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