WREX.com – Rockford’s News LeaderArea anesthesiologist returns from Haiti

Area anesthesiologist returns from Haiti

By Marissa Alter

BELVIDERE (WREX) - Dr. Steve Hryszczuk's first day home is full of mixed emotions. An e-mail requesting anesthesiologists in Haiti inspired him to take on a medical mission to earthquake ravaged Port-au-Prince. Today, he looks around at his world here and tries to reconcile that with the one he lived in for the past week. One where a C-section was done without his usual choice for anesthesia and by just minimal light thanks to a generator.

"I feel like I should be back down there helping out still. I do. There's a--there's certainly mixed emotions about what more could I do."

Hryszczuk worked at a surgical clinic run by Heartline Ministries. It was a women's clinic and orphanage, but quickly morphed into a hospital and recruited staff when the quake hit. Three times a day an ambulance bus would set out into the city, pick up 20-30 patients, and bring them back to the clinic. Hryszczuk remembers a lot of amputations and wounds filled with gravel and rubble.

"The poverty of the Haitian people is just overwhelming. And then to see what little they had be destroyed. It's just heartbreaking."

The doctors at his clinic treat the patients they can, stabilize the ones they can't, and send those off to a larger field hospital or the USS Comfort.

Hryszczuk recalls one little boy who left an impression. "And I'm holding him and taking care of him. And he's looking at me and he's clenching his jaw,  trying to be brave, and his eyes are welling up, and his tears are dripping down his face onto my hands. And just to think that I'm touching this little guy, and he was pinned to the ground in his house for three days."

It wasn't just the patients who touched him, but the other doctors, aid workers, and volunteers who felt compelled to be in Haiti.

"I just saw people go above and beyond, just serve and give and pour themselves into the Haitians."