"I Have to Make It"

"I Have to Make It" http://t.co/YCUJX27Taq
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) July 21, 2013

Oniste Update--July 13, 2013

#Haiti...Oniste Update--July 13, 2013 http://t.co/nvIGZHehr7
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) July 13, 2013

Disillusioned and Disoriented on the Rock Island Trail

Dr. Carroll on #Haiti's poverty—and Peoria's http://t.co/a9UanlBHE8
— Crawford Kilian (@Crof) July 11, 2013

Follow the Dollar (Poor People Have NO Chance)

After you throw everything else out, follow the dollar...that should be the first thing taught in medical school and residency.
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) June 24, 2013

Open Hearts Gives Marie a Second Chance

Open hearts give Haitian patient a 2nd chance - The Naperville Sun couriernews.suntimes.com/lifestyles/200… via @napervillesun
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) May 22, 2013

Marie Goes Home

Marie goes home....blogs.pjstar.com/haiti/2013/05/…
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) May 22, 2013

Monsignor Rohlf's Threat

In 2003 Monsignor Rohlfs threatened to go to the media against Haitian Hearts if I petitioned for a tribunal court against OSF. I could not hardly believe he was saying this to me and Patricia Gibson was standing in his office agreeing with him. I told him I would anyway and spoke to Bishop Jenky that afternoon.

After reading the article tweeted below, I am now not surprised about Monsignor Rohlf's threat against Haitian Hearts. (The article below has a typo...it is "Rohlfs" not "Wallace".)

Mother of Alleged Abuse Victim Says Archbishop Myers Threatened Her Family njtvonline.org/njtoday/video/… via @njtvonline
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) May 21, 2013

Attitudes

Photo by Maria King Carroll

"Attitudes are more important than abilities. Motives are more important than methods. Character is more important than cleverness. And the heart takes precedence over the head."

Denis Parsons Burkitt, 1911-1993

(Dr. Burkitt was an Irishman who drove across sub-Saharan Africa in his beat up Ford pick up truck. He found many African kids between the ages of 5 and 8 years who had deadly facial tumors. He biopsied the tumor and it was found to be caused by a virus. Who would have thought that a virus could cause a cancer now called Burkitt's lymphoma?)

Will OSF Follow Through With Hannah?

Forum: Will OSF follow through with Hannah? shar.es/lwL3N via @sharethis
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) May 6, 2013

Social Injustice in Medicine

Science has revolutionized medicine but there was no revolution and no plan for ensuring equal access. Excellence without equity is what you now inherit. It’s the chief human rights problem of twenty-first-century medicine, and only when we’re all under general anesthesia of the soul will we be able to ignore it as the century marches on.

Farmer, Paul (2013-03-02). To Repair the World (p. 18). University of California Press. Kindle Edition.

More than Technology

Our View: A life-saving moment for Hannah, and a landmark for Peoria - Peoria, IL - pjstar.com pjstar.com/opinions/ourvi…
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) May 1, 2013

Korean Toddler Gets New Trachea at OSF-CHOI...OSF's Haitian Patients Denied Care

Toddler youngest in world to get lab-made windpipe in Peoria operation shar.es/lpMUZ via @sharethis
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) April 30, 2013

Can You Speak Out Without Getting Fired...Be Careful

Can You Speak Out Without Getting Fired? medscape.com/viewarticle/78…
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) April 24, 2013

Illness as a Moral Experience

Looking at medicine this way reinforced my belief that the structure and demands of medical schools and hospitals create obstacles to caregiving. How to revivify caregiving in medicine became the issue. Teaching about illness experiences remains important. Yet the moral–emotional core of those experiences deserves greater primacy — as does the social suffering that affects everyone, but especially marginalized people already injured by poverty, isolation, and other forms of structural violence.

Another orienting issue is the lived relationship between patient (and family) and clinician. Here the anthropological model of exchange based in reciprocity can counterbalance the market model's infiltration into even the most intimate parts of health care. The anthropological perspective suggests that care resembles gift exchange between individuals whose relationship to each other really matters. Stories and meanings are exchanged, but also the raw experience of responsibility and emotional sensibility. Over time, caregiving changes the moral life of both caregiver and care receiver. Ultimately, caregiving is about doing good for others, and doing good in the world, as naive as it may sound, is what medicine is really about. That's what draws people to its practice, even if it's also about technology, biomedical science, and markets. That moral core of medicine may seem abstract, until you see health professionals passionately struggling to be useful, compassionate, responsive, and responsible while working with the indifference of bureaucratic rules, the cold counting and costing of institutional audits, and hard-to-balance personal demands on their time and concern.

Modern medical practice's greatest challenge may be finding a way to keep caregiving central to health care. That way will turn on structural and economic developments, technologies, and therapeutic models, but also on the importance that professionals ascribe to patients' deep experience and to such enduring moral practices of caring as the laying on of hands, the expression of kindness, the enactment of decency, and the commitment to presence — being there for those who need them. This is the embodied wisdom medical students need to learn and we all must remember. It is the lesson for the art of living and the art of medical practice that emerges from my 40 years of rethinking and reliving this subject.

Arthur Kleinman, M.D.

New England Journal of Medicine 2013; 368: 1376-1377

Good Friday in Haiti

It is very early Good Friday morning.

Marie just texted me: "Dr mwn pa kapab respire bien ni donmi" ("Doctor I cannot breathe well or sleep.")

Jesus actual cause of death as He hung on His cross was suffocation. Marie is having fluid from her heart backing up into her lungs, which floods her alveoli and impairs oxygen transfer. Marie is suffocating on her cross like our Lord did on His.

Jesus could text no one. Marie can.

Jesus had to die. Marie doesn't.

Our response hasn't changed much in two thousand years.


John A. Carroll, MD
www.haitianhearts.org

More ER Crowding Means More Inpatient Deaths

See this abstract from the online version of Annals of Emergency Medicine, December 2012.

"They are going to let me die..."

Early this morning Marie texted me: "They are going to let me die, Doctor Carroll."

I quickly called her on Skype. She does not sound good. Marie cannot breathe well or sleep well. She seems to be dying of congestive heart failure due to her mitral valve which has been destroyed.

I have e mailed multiple people in the States and in Haiti requesting help for Marie. She needs to be hospitalized for oxygen and aggressive diuresis. And then she needs valve replacement.

@micheljmartelly Please help young lady with heart problem. She was operated in Illinois...needs help today..Marie at 47735075. Thx.
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) March 26, 2013

OSF Please Follow Your Philosophy

Please, OSF, follow your Mission Philosophy....blogs.pjstar.com/haiti/2013/03/…
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) March 25, 2013

Sounds Like Peoria to Me

Lyons: U.S. patients the victims of health care profiteers shar.es/ezQUa via @sharethis
— John A. Carroll (@haitianhearts) March 20, 2013

Pope Francis

Clearly defining his vision of his own role, he quoted from scriptural texts to say that as Bishop of Rome, he was endowed with “a certain power.”

But he went on: “Let us never forget that authentic power is service and that the pope too, when exercising power, must enter ever more fully into that service which has its radiant culmination on the Cross.”

“He must be inspired by the lowly, concrete and faithful service which marked St. Joseph and, like him, he must open his arms to protect all of God’s people and embrace with tender affection the whole of humanity, especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important, those whom Matthew lists in the final judgment on love: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison.”

New York Times--19 March 2013