Nurse Megan FitzGerald shares her experiences working in “Haiti, After the Quake” 

  Pediatric nurse practitioner and local resident, Megan FitzGerald, shares her experiences working with two different non-governmental organization in Haiti providing disaster relief and medical care to victims of the earthquake.  Members of the community have asked how they can help so Megan and Creekside Books & Coffee are working together to provide a presentation and slide show to describe the situation in Haiti and discuss ways that residents can help.  Megan was a member of Crudems first trauma team in to treat victims of the earthquake at Hopital Sacre Coeur in Milot, 90 miles north of Port-au-Prince. Earthquake victims were brought in by the US Navy, Coastquard and the French.  She moved on to Project Hope on board of the USNA Comfort Ship which is a 1,000 bed floating hospital I the harbour of Port-au-Prince.  She will return for a third trip to the USS Comfort, another Navy hospital ship anchored off the coast of Haiti. Her photos from her trips show the dire circumstances that many Haitian’s endured. “Ninety percent of the children had traumatic injuries,” Megan said. “They weren’t scrapes. Building had been falling on these little kids.” Many children died due because they were unable to receive care in time.  After everything she’d seen, Megan faced a simple choice, “You give in to despair, or you try to save more children.”  For more information, please view an article printed by Sean Kirst in the Post Standard on Feb. 10, 2010. “Suffering of little children pulls her back” (to Haiti).  http://www.syracuse.com/kirst/index.ssf/20010/02/suffering_of_little_children_p.htmlMeghan