The Heat was on in Haiti

Since Haiti is in the Caribbean, I naturally expected it to be hot. 

I even looked at the weather report before I left and it confirmed my expectations.  To prepare for the heat I took all "wicking" and "quick dry" synthetic clothes - with one exception - to help beat the heat.  As it turns out, the first day the heat beat me. 

When we started working Monday, I worked hard and didn't take breaks. It is the way I would work if I was back home and, say, working in the yard. Of course, the 95 degree weather, 90-something percent humidity and scorching sun with no shade is not something I contend with at home. Oops! Should have remembered that! 

I knew enough to realize I needed to drink a lot of water, which I did. (Reader warning: Bodily function commentary about to ensue.)  Around mid-morning, however, a few of my fellow female builders and I briefly discussed that we had been working and drinking for about four hours and none of us had urinated.  We knew that wasn't a good sign, but didn't know what else to do about it as we each felt like we were drinking a lot.

Just before lunch I was starting to feel a little light-headed and I was getting a rip-roaring headache. What was most disconcerting to me was my heart. My resting pulse is generally in the 60-something range. Suffice it to say that that means I generally don't notice my heart beating. On this day, however, my heart was pounding in a way I had never quite experienced. I told my crew leader I was just "going to take a short break for a few minutes."  It didn't take long for things to go extremely downhill.

A few short minutes into my break I felt very nauseous. Within moments of that feeling I got sick to my stomach several times in a row. My crew leader saw me and sent me off to the medic tent. When I arrived, they took my vitals.  My pulse was 90 beats per minute and my blood pressure - which tends to run very low - was 149/100. Yikes! That explains my pounding heart and a host of other things. 

The doctors and nurses asked me where I was from. "Pennsylvania" was my reply, to which they simply responded, "Ahhhh...yup."  I, of course, said, "What does that mean?"  They proceeded to tell me that the people from the northern U.S. and "the Canadians - definitely the Canadians!" were "dropping like flies today."  They explained we weren't accustomed to the extreme heat and most of us were not used to intense manual labor in that heat. That certainly made sense. But did they really have to tell me the "Texans, Floridians, and other Gulf Coast residents were doing fine"?!

"Dr Jack" - a Floridian - told me I need to drink some electrolytes so he mixed up a "cocktail" for me. I promptly vomited it. "Hhhmmm, " Dr. Jack said, "Give yourself a minute, lie down and we'll try that again in a few minutes." Some time passed, I drank another electrolyte drink and had the same result. This was starting to be a drag.

That's when I met Dr. Ernie - a French Canadian. (By this time Dr. Jack had moved on to several newly overheated - and, in one case, bleeding from a bad finger cut - patients.)  Dr. Ernie told me I had to go on an IV bag. "Geez," I thought.  As you can imagine, however, after receiving a bag o' hydration and about 25 minutes of rest, my pulse dropped to 60 and my blood pressure came way down. 

I popped up and was rarin' to go when Dr. Ernie informed me I was done for the day. Since they needed the space in the small medic tent for the newly ill and wounded, they sent me and a few other of my fallen builders back to the camp to rest in the "medical facility" there.

This is not how I wanted to spend my time in Haiti.

I spent that afternoon resting and trying to lose the bad, bad headache. That night I ate dinner and began to plan how I would work differently the next day. Of course, that meant drinking electrolytes (they started coming around with packets of electrolytes to mix in a our water for the remainder of the week) and going just a little bit slower. What I hadn't thought about, but what became absolute nirvana, is that the more we built we actually created a little shade (from the walls and eventually the roof).

My body, and those of my fellow builders, struggled to adapt to the heat for the next few days. This was largely evidenced by swollen lower extremities. Doctors Jack and Ernie told us that our bodies thought they were in trouble in the heat so they were holding onto water. Sure enough, at night when it was cooler and our bodies thought they were out of danger, the water was eventually eliminated. By the middle of the week, our bodies seemed to adjust.  It was a marvel, really, to watch my body kick into "survival" mode and eventually adapt to the environment. 

I am pleased (and grateful) to report I didn't lose any work time after Monday's "incident." Some others were not as foruntate. Some had to stay back at camp for the next few days and help out in the kitchen preparing and serving meals. They were providing a much needed and useful service. 

I know of one woman, unfortunately, whose blood pressure they couldn't get under control so Habitat drove her to the Dominican Republic on Wednesday (there aren't a lot of flights coming in and out of Haiti hence the long drive to the DR) and sent her home. We all felt for her.

On the other hand, there was a 70-year old woman on my build team and the heat never got to her all week. She was a workhorse (that's a compliment) - and she was from Cape Cod! Not exactly a scorching climate! Go figure.

Thanks to Doctors Jack and Ernie, the heat only truly beat me one day. When I arrived home after a week of hard, hot labor, I slept for 11 hours straight without waking up once. I was exhausted but it was worth every second.  And the cool, early-December nights? Heaven!