Saving Jimani: Life and Death in the Haiti Earthquake by Rene Steinhauer

Rene Steinhauer, RN, EMT-P, is an accomplished nurse with
skilled disaster training experience. He has practiced medicine on all seven
continents including working as a flight nurse in Antarctica, a combat medic in
Iraq and a disaster manager in Hurricane Katrina, the Asian Tsunami, the Haiti
Earthquake, and Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines. Most recently he worked as
the Chief Nurse in an Ebola Treatment Center in Liberia.

Rene Steinhauer recently published Saving Jimani: Life
and Death in the Haiti Earthquake, a book about his experiences working as a
nurse and disaster manager to help survivors of the Haiti Earthquake. It is
available for sale on Amazon in eBook and paperback.

The earth shakes, buildings fall, hundreds of thousands
of people die in minutes. Others lie broken and infected in the streets of
Haiti begging, and waiting for help. An empty orphanage is the battleground for
life and death in the Haiti Earthquake. Two hours from civilization, a small
team of doctors, nurses and paramedics frantically struggle to save two
thousand patients as the hope of survival dwindles minute by minute. The battle
has just begun. And the medical team asks, “Can we save any of these people?”

Managing the twelve-person team, Rene Steinhauer, a weary combat medic, stands
witness to human suffering greater than he ever encountered in Iraq. Rene
partners with Danya Swanson, a “daddy’s girl” with a nursing degree who thinks
she has what it takes to save the day and suddenly finds herself as the
disaster manager for Jimani. Rene dries his tears and gets up to fight in a
brutal battle where amputated arms and legs are piled up until somebody,
anybody, has time to drag them to the fire pit. The battle rages, hopes are
raised and dashed and thousands of lives hang by a thread. Can an inexperienced
nurse, with no disaster experience, really save Jimani?

Since I’m a nurse I was super excited when I received an
email with the question if I wanted to review ‘Saving Jimani’. ‘Saving Jimani’
is a book written by Rene Steinhauer, about his experiences as a nurse and a disaster
manager to help survivors of the earthquake in Haiti. I normally don’t
read many non-fiction novels, but since this one was about Rene’s experiences
as a nurse I really wanted to give it a try.

The first thing that got my attention when I
started reading this book, was that being a nurse in The Netherlands is very different
than being one in the US. The education to becoming a nurse is very different,
and as a nurse in the US you seem to be allowed to do much more than a nurse
here in The Netherlands. I really enjoyed reading and learning about these
differences. And it definitely intrigued me.

‘Saving Jimani’ is a gripping story about the
devastation, sadness and hurt that followed the earthquake that shook Haiti. It’s
a story about how medical volunteers from around the world were forced to watch
thousands of people die because there just wasn’t enough room, supplies and
people to save everyone who needed help. But it’s also about the things that
medical personal can do in order to save people’s lives, even in the most
desperate of times.

Rene was able to describe the sadness of those
days in Jimani. And it really made me look up to him and all those other nurses,
doctors and other volunteers who decided to go to that place to save lives. I’m
a nurse, but I haven’t volunteered in any disaster’s and knowing myself, I
wouldn’t be able to do that. I wouldn’t be able to handle the sadness and I
definitely would not be able to watch all those people die because there just aren’t
enough medical supplies. I’m just not strong enough! And that’s okay for me.

This book was a very interesting but also sad
read. I enjoyed it but what I didn’t like was the way the story went from the
present to the past, and back to the present. This just bothered me a little
and I found myself losing interest when the story was back to something about
the early days of Rene’s carrier. Not that it wasn’t interesting to read, but
just because for me,  it didn’t quite fit
in the story.

This book made me proud to be a nurse, and I’m
really glad that there are so many people out there who are willing to interrupt
their lives just to save others. But for a book, I didn’t ‘love’ the writing as
much as I wanted to.

Third degree burns to the face and chest are life threatening.  However these types of burns also suggest an
inhalation injury to the lungs.  People
with burns like this do not live.  They
certainly do not live without the best care from a burn center.  The fact that he was alive six days after the
earthquake was an absolute miracle.

The story about how Eric Louis ended up in the back of
the pickup truck was never clear. Somehow his wife found him and carried him
for miles before someone put him in the truck. 
He had been outside the hospital parking lot for most of the day.  I called for a stretcher and some local
medics helped us bring him into the parking lot.

Chris and I immediately started a more detailed
assessment.  Normally, with such an injury,
the lungs would be damaged and full of fluid. 
His lungs seemed to be in great shape. 
During the initial treatment of a burn, massive amounts of IV fluid
would be pumped into the burn patient to keep his kidneys from failing.  This had not occurred, and we weren’t sure if
his kidneys had already failed.  If they
had, there was no chance of survival for this man.  If the lung damage or kidney failure were not
going to kill him, his next likely cause of death would be infection.  Eric was not likely to live more than a day or
two.

The local hospital doctors said that they would not be
able to care for him.  We could have
tried to find a place in Port-au-Prince where he might receive medical care,
but at the time, we didn’t know where to find functional hospitals, field
hospitals or medical resources.  However,
we had the Puerto Rican team, which was ready and able to help. Since we had
more doctors than patients, it made sense to take Eric Louis and his wife back
to Jimani.

To describe an individual as a patient is a medical way
to lessen the human component of medicine. 
Patients need treatment, people need care.  Patients have medical complaints such as a
femur fracture; individuals have feelings and pain.  A femur fracture has a specific treatment;
the individual has needs that go beyond pain control and physically connecting
two ends of a broken bone.  Every
casualty is more than a patient.  Every casualty
is an individual.

For a medical provider to agree to accept a patient, he
must believe that he can provide the care the patient needs.  However, it is not simply an agreement to
manage the patient’s injury.  It is an
all-encompassing agreement that the medical provider will care for the
person.  The caregiver is now responsible
for the patient.  To accept Eric Louis as
our patient, we affirmed that we had the resources to provide care — care not
available in Port-au-Prince — and it was a personal contract with Eric and his
wife that we would care for his individual needs. 

With the decision made, we had the sending hospital give
Eric a shot of morphine and we gently placed Eric and his wife in the back of
the pickup truck.  Eric’s wife sat with
her back to the wall of the truck cab and pulled Eric to her chest to hold him
during the long and rough road to Jimani. 

She looked to him with concern in her eyes.  She knew her husband was not likely to live, but
her tears stopped with renewed hope once we promised to care for Eric.  As the truck hit each bump, she tried to
minimize the impact of the road.  She did
not speak a word to him during the drive, but her gentle touch spoke of a love
that was likely to encounter the tragedy of death.  Whatever the outcome, she was going to be
with her husband until the end.

It was nearly sunset when we returned to the clinic in
Jimani.  Dark clouds hugged the rim of
the valley as sun buried itself behind the mountains.  As the truck pulled into the compound I
realized that the clinic we left a few hours ago was not the clinic to which we
returned.  The calmness of the day
evaporated with the morning dew.  Large
numbers of casualties arrived while I was gone. 
Now people were briskly moving in different directions.  Activity was everywhere, but none of it
coordinated.  Groups of people huddled
near the corner of a building, near a truck or a patch of dirt.  They surrounded one or two nurses or doctors
desperately trying to bandage and splint the injured. The Haitians had learned
that the American doctors were in Jimani and they flooded the compound with the
injured.  The clinic had been overwhelmed
and new casualties were now being collected at the orphanage about 200 yards
down the hill from the clinic.  People
were lying in the dirt around the orphanage. 
Others were moaning and bleeding on the cement slab of the
building.  Families were tugging at the
arms of every American they could find. 
I was stunned.

The faces of the injured were the most difficult to
see.  These people were suffering from terrible
physical pain.  They had spent days
waiting for assistance and had lost hope. 
They left the government hospital in Jimani hearing that there was hope
at Good Samaritan Hospital, but their last hope was destroyed as their tears
and blood intermingled with the dirt that was their new bed.  They expected, and even wanted, to die just
to be relieved of their pain.  The pain
of desperation was greater than the pain of an angulated fracture. When I
looked into their hollow eyes, I felt their agony.  Many had no tears left to cry.

As the light breeze moved across the field of casualties,
an overpowering aroma attacked the senses. 
The cries for help and the cries of mourning filled my ears.  I felt my heart racing in my chest.  The deep breaths I took made the smell of
death stronger. I had never worked in such a demoralizing disaster.  For a moment my chest and heart were stinging
as I tried to grapple with the enormity of the situation.

The organized medical clinic of the morning was
gone.  I was standing at the epicenter of
hell.  In less than twelve hours the
medical team had been overwhelmed and the supplies were critically low.  Certainly, the change from calm to chaos was
from something other than an overwhelming number of casualties arriving at the
medical clinic.  Something had gone
terribly wrong at Good Samaritan Hospital.

As I scanned the area, my heart sank with the realization
that I should never have brought Eric Louis here. There were doctors at the
Port-au-Prince hospital and they did not have as many patients as we had in
Jimani.  But I accepted personal
responsibility for this man.  I drove him
across the border to this place of death. 
As I looked back at the couple and saw the tears running down Mrs.
Louis’ face, I asked myself, “What have I done?”

“Saving Jimani is
so much more than the reporting of life and death in the Haiti earthquake. It
is a story of raw human emotion, grappling with the reality of hundreds if not
thousands of people with broken bodies and spirits seeking medical help in an area
where there was none. It is the story of heart break, faith, failure and
triumph.”

“This is an
insider perspective from someone who did not need to be there but chose, in his
role as a volunteer disaster medic, to take part in the mission to save lives.”

“This book
provides a glimpse into what is experienced and felt emotionally by disaster volunteers
who willingly go to places in the world where everyone else is trying to flee.”

“Rarely does a
book capture the true inside story of a mega disaster and the advance medical
team sent to “hold the fort” until other rescue teams and supplies
are mobilized. Utilizing his past military skills and disaster experience, Rene
takes charge and quickly organizes a cohesive team in the midst of chaos. With
everyone working twenty hour shifts, chaos is quickly transformed into a smooth
operation and countless lives are saved.”

Before authoring books and magazines, Rene Steinhauer
started a career in medicine as a photographer with the American Red
Cross.  As he responded to disasters he
felt more inclined to assist in the disaster than to take photographs of it. During
one disaster exercise he encountered a beautiful flight nurse from the University
of California at Davis Medical Center. 
He wanted to meet this woman and a friend suggested he volunteer in the
emergency room where the helicopter crew was based.  He did it. 

Since then, he has practiced medicine on all seven
continents including working as a flight nurse in Antarctica, a combat medic in
Iraq and a disaster manager in Hurricane Katrina, the Asian Tsunami, the Haiti
Earthquake, and Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines. Most recently he worked as
the Chief Nurse in an Ebola Treatment Center in Liberia.

In addition to writing ‘Saving Jimani: Life and Death in
the Haiti Earthquake’, Rene Steinhauer has written for numerous medical
journals and magazines including: The Journal of Emergency Medical Services,
the American Journal of Nursing, Parachutist Magazine and Soldier of Fortune
Magazine.

For more information about Rene Steinhauer please visit
his website, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.