Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Haiti day 2
Just a quick post to let those of you not on Facebook that I have arrived safe and sound in port au prince! Looks like it is going to be a steep learning curve for me and creole! Megan and her right hand brooke are awesome and this Is going to be a wonderful month!!
Hot, sticky and awesome... Cold pop tastes so great!!
Will write more when I get settled in!!
Love lise
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Amazing people and tragedy..
Tonight I am sitting on my patio, arranging my life and my up-coming trip to Haiti. This past week I have had the privileged of spending time with other people who have spent time in and loved Haiti also. One even spent sometime in the "clink" down there, as his southern self calls it! Not only did I so enjoy listening to all the stories and hearing all the great things that they had experienced while there, I started to get more excited about my up-coming trip. It was nice to see that even though both of these people are now back in the States they have both stayed very connected to Haiti and their work there. Even trying to get back to work full-time...Something I admire! For both of them Haiti was not a fleeting experience they have a love for Haiti that warms my heart.. they are both passionate and caring people and I am so very happy I got to spend time with both Holli Griffiths and Paul Waggoner! Hope to spend time with them again soon!!
Although hanging with them was great I also learned some very sad and troubling news about Ti Kay and Megan's supplies..Seems like it is so hard to catch a break at times...
Below is a picture of a fire that ripped through the compound that held her container full of supplies (not to mention the workshop for a group from Cite Soleil and many other projects currently underway at Haiti Communitere).
Thousands of dollars in precious and needed medical supplies, supplies that are not easily replaced, supplies that save lives and keep people well. It is to say the least devastating...
Currently, I am trying to get a hold of some suppliers to get supplies to take with me to help until they can build up their's. If anybody has connections with medical supply personnel, please pass them on my information and I can talk to them about how they can help (lbudreo@hotmail.com or 780-278-7186). Also, if you would like to donate money that would also be useful as I will pick up what supplies I can here with it. Every little bit counts.
Megan and her crew are down in Haiti working day in and day out to try and provide healthcare to the people of Haiti. In the conditions, providing the type of care they do is no small feat ..this current tragedy thrown into the mix just makes providing that caliber of care all the more difficult. As a nurse working in a resource abundant facility I could not imagine trying to provide the type of care Megan and crew provide without the appropriate resources.
Thanks for all your support in this matter. Keep your eyes and ears open as I might try to have a last minute fundraiser next weekend and will keep you all posted!
Lise
Although hanging with them was great I also learned some very sad and troubling news about Ti Kay and Megan's supplies..Seems like it is so hard to catch a break at times...
Below is a picture of a fire that ripped through the compound that held her container full of supplies (not to mention the workshop for a group from Cite Soleil and many other projects currently underway at Haiti Communitere).
Thousands of dollars in precious and needed medical supplies, supplies that are not easily replaced, supplies that save lives and keep people well. It is to say the least devastating...
Currently, I am trying to get a hold of some suppliers to get supplies to take with me to help until they can build up their's. If anybody has connections with medical supply personnel, please pass them on my information and I can talk to them about how they can help (lbudreo@hotmail.com or 780-278-7186). Also, if you would like to donate money that would also be useful as I will pick up what supplies I can here with it. Every little bit counts.
Megan and her crew are down in Haiti working day in and day out to try and provide healthcare to the people of Haiti. In the conditions, providing the type of care they do is no small feat ..this current tragedy thrown into the mix just makes providing that caliber of care all the more difficult. As a nurse working in a resource abundant facility I could not imagine trying to provide the type of care Megan and crew provide without the appropriate resources.
Thanks for all your support in this matter. Keep your eyes and ears open as I might try to have a last minute fundraiser next weekend and will keep you all posted!
Lise
Monday, April 23, 2012
Thank you!
I got the following message this past weekend. Anthea and Lyndon are children of a guy I have known for a very long time (Jay and my brother were great friends growing up)! Makes me grateful for parents like Jodi and Jay who are showing their children that one can make a difference at any age. Compassion is often so abundant in children and much can be learned by these little people!!
Thanks again you guys!
Lise,
This is Anthea. Lyndon (my brother) and I raised some money in the last couple of months. We sold home-made napkin holders, little people, and bugs and sold them to our family and friends. We raised $37.20. We want to give it to you to use for medicine when you travel next to Haiti. My dad will make sure he gets it to you.
Anthea (and Lyndon)
Thursday, April 12, 2012
A few more items...
Hi Everyone,
Here are a few more things that I/we need for my next trip:
Protein bars/powder (please not the powder in the plastic jugs as they are too hard to pack and are very heavy)
Vitamin B6 (50-100 mg tabs): this vitamin specifically helps fight a toxicity from a common TB drug. A 4 pack can be bought from Costco for $24
Weekly Dosettes: containers to provide medications for people to take at home. TB medication regeimes can be complicated at the best of times, providing patients with prepackaged meds helps improve compliance and reduce possibility of developing drug resistance.
Let me know if you are able to help with any of these items! Thanks!
Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.> ~Daniel Berrigan
Here are a few more things that I/we need for my next trip:
Protein bars/powder (please not the powder in the plastic jugs as they are too hard to pack and are very heavy)
Vitamin B6 (50-100 mg tabs): this vitamin specifically helps fight a toxicity from a common TB drug. A 4 pack can be bought from Costco for $24
Weekly Dosettes: containers to provide medications for people to take at home. TB medication regeimes can be complicated at the best of times, providing patients with prepackaged meds helps improve compliance and reduce possibility of developing drug resistance.
Let me know if you are able to help with any of these items! Thanks!
Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.> ~Daniel Berrigan
Saturday, March 31, 2012
way too serious?! :)
In the past 6 months I have had 2 people very close to me,women whom I respect immensely, tell me that I was an "intense and serious person". Now I feel this is a fairly accurate summary of me.. the kicker for me was that they felt I am that way the majority of time....<>
Today was a beautiful day outside and as I walked in the sun today I started thinking about what my friends had said. This year I have been teaching clinical nursing and have expressed to my students the importance of being self-reflective in their life and practice as nurses. What I realized today as I thought about my friends comments, is that to be truly self-reflective you need to consider what others think about you, especially those close to you that know the true you. So that is what I did..
And what I have come up with is this..I AM a serious and intense person. Can I work on chilling out a bit more...maybe.. ok... yes
But to be serious doesn't mean that I don't enjoy life, the experiences I have, that I can't see the good in this crazy world in which we live and that I can't cut loose and have a purely fun time (at times)!
But what it does mean to me is this.. If you are involved in my life we will have deep meaningful conversations about a broad range of things and sometimes what we talk about may make the both of us uneasy.My facebook posts will probably err on the serious side. You will have a champion for your cause whatever it may be and I will be as supportive of you as I can! I will count on you as I know you will always be able to count on me...
I am not going to apologize for being the way I am...I will work on relaxing a bit more and truly enjoying the moments that I am given!
As most of you know, I work in a field that IS serious, I volunteer in positions that push myself and others to places that are uncomfortable. The conditions in which most people in this world live in IS something that more people should take seriously. So often I get wrapped up in that part of it and lose sight of the amazingness of the life I have in front of me...
And sometimes my friends, who love me very much pull me back to that amazingness (is that even a word?! nope..at least it wasn't in spell check..) and for that I am grateful...
Tonight= sit in the sun and enjoy then chill out with friends and enjoy my awesome life!
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Bringing Sexy Back....
Here goes....with the serious stuff again!!
As most of you know I will be heading back to Haiti this coming spring/summer. This time I will again be working with a different doctor and I am very excited about it! There are many reasons why I am excited of course, one is that it has been almost a year since I was there, there are many people I am missing (Rose, Beth, John, Winnie,Olez and many others) I am excited to see the changes that have been made there and most of all I am looking forward to meeting Dr. Coffee and helping her and her staff in anyway!
Dr. Megan Coffee is an infectious disease doctor from the U.S. and she runs the organization I will be volunteering with which is called "Ti Kay". The translation of TI Kay is "little house". Tuberculosis is a disease that is spread through secretions expelled through cough and sneezes and in close quarters i.e. little houses, tents etc it is spread that much easier. TB is thought of as the "sickness of the little house" because of its highly infectious nature and transmission to people living in close quarters. TB has all but been eradicated from places like Canada and the US (except for isolated cases/areas) while Haiti (1.5 hour flight from Miami) has the highest mortality rate related to TB in the America's.
TB is very treatable but you need money for medications (most TB is treated with a cocktail of medications), money for food and money/equipment for treatment of side-effects (of the disease and treatment). The very scary thing about TB is that there are different strains and (in not wanting to get too technical here) if not treated properly,the strains mutate and become that much more difficult to treat.
For more information about TB in Haiti I suggest you check out the Ti Kay website, which I will give you the link too at the end of this post.
Dr. Megan Coffee has been treating TB and HIV/AIDS patients in Port Au Prince since just after the earthquake. She and her staff supplement the current program run by the state. Medications for both HIV and TB are supplied through programs like PEPFAR and PNLT (the national TB drug program)but Ti Kay must supply most other things to the patients including food, oxygen, vitamins (integral to the health of these patients),supplies like syringes and facility costs.
Megan is a twitter aficionado and often tweets stories about life in Haiti, patients stories and often her thoughts in just 143 characters. If you want to follow her you can find her at @doktecoffee. Recently, she tweeted about trying to find a way to make "funding food sexy". One of the side effects of disease and treatment in both TB and HIV is anorexia. In a country where citizens already struggle with the reality of malnutrition the addition of either of these diseases (and often people suffer from both at the same time) can be devastating. When Megan tweeted about making food sexy I tweeted back and asked her to give me numbers about how much it costs Ti Kay to feed and provide much needed vitamins for the inpatient unit of the program. She wrote me back and outlined costs... basically it boils down to $1600 a month for food, chef, vitamins and transport of food to the hospital from the warehouse.Lets break that down a bit further....
$1600/month = $53.00 a day to feed and provide vitamins for 30 people.
$53.00 = 10 lattes.. and not even the "special ones"!
$53.00 = 1/2 of the pair of jeans I bought 2 weeks ago
$53.00 = 4 movie tickets (with $5 to spare to buy a...??? drink)
$53.00 = less then 1/2 of most people cable bill each month
I know that many of you have asked me to let you know what you can contribute to my trip. This is how you can help me.. you can help me bring sexy back to food for the inpatients at Ti Kay. But more importantly you can help people in a way that is so important to their healing. Lets show Megan that helping people get better (and they truly do get better) through food and medication and vitamins IS sexy.. and awesome all at the same time!
My hope is this...
100 people @ $15.00/month = food security and healing for 30 people a month
That equals $180/person for the year...
If you wish to help bring sexy back...contact me at lbudreo@hotmail.com or 780-278-7186
Thanks in advance for all the support you have all shown me over the past 2 years!
Lise
http://www.tikayhaiti.org/
As most of you know I will be heading back to Haiti this coming spring/summer. This time I will again be working with a different doctor and I am very excited about it! There are many reasons why I am excited of course, one is that it has been almost a year since I was there, there are many people I am missing (Rose, Beth, John, Winnie,Olez and many others) I am excited to see the changes that have been made there and most of all I am looking forward to meeting Dr. Coffee and helping her and her staff in anyway!
Dr. Megan Coffee is an infectious disease doctor from the U.S. and she runs the organization I will be volunteering with which is called "Ti Kay". The translation of TI Kay is "little house". Tuberculosis is a disease that is spread through secretions expelled through cough and sneezes and in close quarters i.e. little houses, tents etc it is spread that much easier. TB is thought of as the "sickness of the little house" because of its highly infectious nature and transmission to people living in close quarters. TB has all but been eradicated from places like Canada and the US (except for isolated cases/areas) while Haiti (1.5 hour flight from Miami) has the highest mortality rate related to TB in the America's.
TB is very treatable but you need money for medications (most TB is treated with a cocktail of medications), money for food and money/equipment for treatment of side-effects (of the disease and treatment). The very scary thing about TB is that there are different strains and (in not wanting to get too technical here) if not treated properly,the strains mutate and become that much more difficult to treat.
For more information about TB in Haiti I suggest you check out the Ti Kay website, which I will give you the link too at the end of this post.
Dr. Megan Coffee has been treating TB and HIV/AIDS patients in Port Au Prince since just after the earthquake. She and her staff supplement the current program run by the state. Medications for both HIV and TB are supplied through programs like PEPFAR and PNLT (the national TB drug program)but Ti Kay must supply most other things to the patients including food, oxygen, vitamins (integral to the health of these patients),supplies like syringes and facility costs.
Megan is a twitter aficionado and often tweets stories about life in Haiti, patients stories and often her thoughts in just 143 characters. If you want to follow her you can find her at @doktecoffee. Recently, she tweeted about trying to find a way to make "funding food sexy". One of the side effects of disease and treatment in both TB and HIV is anorexia. In a country where citizens already struggle with the reality of malnutrition the addition of either of these diseases (and often people suffer from both at the same time) can be devastating. When Megan tweeted about making food sexy I tweeted back and asked her to give me numbers about how much it costs Ti Kay to feed and provide much needed vitamins for the inpatient unit of the program. She wrote me back and outlined costs... basically it boils down to $1600 a month for food, chef, vitamins and transport of food to the hospital from the warehouse.Lets break that down a bit further....
$1600/month = $53.00 a day to feed and provide vitamins for 30 people.
$53.00 = 10 lattes.. and not even the "special ones"!
$53.00 = 1/2 of the pair of jeans I bought 2 weeks ago
$53.00 = 4 movie tickets (with $5 to spare to buy a...??? drink)
$53.00 = less then 1/2 of most people cable bill each month
I know that many of you have asked me to let you know what you can contribute to my trip. This is how you can help me.. you can help me bring sexy back to food for the inpatients at Ti Kay. But more importantly you can help people in a way that is so important to their healing. Lets show Megan that helping people get better (and they truly do get better) through food and medication and vitamins IS sexy.. and awesome all at the same time!
My hope is this...
100 people @ $15.00/month = food security and healing for 30 people a month
That equals $180/person for the year...
If you wish to help bring sexy back...contact me at lbudreo@hotmail.com or 780-278-7186
Thanks in advance for all the support you have all shown me over the past 2 years!
Lise
http://www.tikayhaiti.org/
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Rose
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