Walking in Broken Shoes: A Nurse’s Story about Haiti and the Earthquake
Susan Magnuson Walsh
Susan Walsh was living a pretty average yet fulfilling life with her husband and family. Each spouse had a stable job, many good friends, visions of a bright future and happiness. This joy-filled reality of theirs came crumbling down when their oldest son, Brad, was tragically killed in a car accident. Searching for change, Susan Walsh accepted a position as a clinical instructor for graduate nurses in Chicago, Illinois.
Susan understood that her 30 years of experience as a pediatric nurse was a valuable asset in developing her student’s medical knowledge but she felt her students would need more to their education. She soon designed a trip that would provide students with hands-on clinical experience but also provide assistance to deserving people. After much research and deliberation, Susan decided upon Haiti as their future clinical host country.
Each year, Susan and her graduate students would travel to the country-side of Haiti and set up their clinic. This free clinic provided hundreds of local residents with hands-on medical examinations led by the students themselves. Many residents would travel several miles of treacherous land by foot just to get a spot in line. For most, this would be the first and only medical attention made available to them.
Each trip brought new and humbling experiences to the next clinic group as they provided necessary medications, examinations, and dressings to each and every grateful Haitian that came through. Susan kept record of her most memorable experiences and encounters on each trip through various emails sent to loved ones in the United States. Each email contained raw emotion as she reflected on personal accounts with many suffering yet optimistic Haitians in desperate need of medical attention.
Six clinic trips later, Susan was still finding her clinic to be as useful and helpful as ever. Haitians still came around to the free clinic to receive annual medical attention for themselves and their family. Students were gaining valuable knowledge that they could not receive elsewhere, while providing services to those that truly deserved it. Each one seeking a life-changing experience, but not aware the devastation they were about to witness.
On January 12, 2010, as Susan and her clinical students were preparing to head back to the United States, Haiti was hit by a massive earthquake. This earthquake (called “Tranblemannte 2010 nan peyi Ayiti,” in Haitian), was a magnitude of 7.0, with an epicenter near the town of Leogane (16 miles West of Port-au-Prince, the capital). Susan’s clinical group was nearer the epicenter than the worst hit area of Port-Au-Prince, which would explain the major devastation they witnessed in the critical hours following the earthquake.
In these critical hours, Susan and her clinical students were thrust into a crucial role at the local hospital which only had one doctor on staff and very limited medical supplies. They personally witnessed many deaths and treated major injuries with no time to follow appropriate sanitation protocol. Haitians walked several miles carrying injured loved ones to the hospital, and waited patiently for the American medical staff to tend to them. While their country was devastated, Susan explains their spirits were never once broken.
This entire book shares with us several of Susan and her clinical patients’ most intimate and emotional encounters throughout her many trips to Haiti. She offers an interesting perspective on the Haitian culture that most of us could never gain otherwise. Most importantly, this book offers a very in-depth and personal account of what really happened during those critical hours following that devastating earthquake in Haiti.
Through her accounts, the reader can truly understand how important time is following a devastating natural disaster. Additionally, the reader can gain a new perspective on just how tragic this earthquake was for the Haitian people and how much they lost.
I selected this particular book because I wanted to read about the magnitude of this tragic earthquake we all watched from a comfortable distance. I also found this earthquake to be most interesting because I was merely 400 miles away on San Salvador Island (Bahamas) as this event occurred. After the earthquake occurred, we were informed that this tiny island we were staying on was at risk for a tsunami. Fortunately we did not have a tsunami, but we did experience very terrible weather conditions for the next few days on the island. The waves increased in frequency and size, and the wind picked up quite a bit. I was so far away from access to media that I did not really truly hear or see what happened in Haiti that day, and this book helped me to gain a new perspective.
The main thing that I did not enjoy about this book was that Susan wrote from a pretty religious stand-point. Please understand that it has nothing to do with disliking religion, or being “anti-religious.” I personally believe that a lot of the important details of her encounters were strongly emphasized through religion and not just presented as the facts or details as they occurred. This may turn some people away from the book, as they may not be interested in the religious aspect of Susan and her clinic group.
However, her accounts offer very raw and unaltered emotions towards the ever-humble Haitian culture and how grateful they all were to receive medical attention in general from this clinic. Although I am quite obviously not a nurse, I believe the medical perspective this book offers provides for a very interesting (and sometimes gut-wrenching) account on what the Haitian people experienced after that tragic earthquake. While most Americans were able to learn about the quake through the media, this book offers an unaltered experiences that were quieted until now.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in humanitarian efforts, natural disasters, cultural differences, medicine, and the earthquake in Haiti. Each country affected by natural disasters may deal with these experiences differently than we would, due to cultural differences (among other things). I believe it is important to gain as much knowledge as possible on natural disasters and how the effect people and their cultures, as disasters will become more frequent and intense in our lifetimes.
