Edna’s Story

Edna’s Journey to Recovery

I was doing medical clinics in Haiti often going to different villages that had absolutely no medical care.

Several pastors came to me, frantically saying that there was a girl that was dying in their village. I agreed to go with them, and as I approached the hut of the patient I was overwhelmed by the fact that it was made of sticks with a burlap Roof and some fetching. It was a very hot day, and there was no vegetation around this hut. I went into the hut and I saw Ed for the first time. She was indeed dying. She was sweating profusely, and also in congestive heart failure manifested by a great deal of labored breathing. It was also quite hectic as there was no food in the house, and she was very, very skinny and “skeletal like”.

I had one of the pastors translate for me while I talked to her about her problem. She says through the Pastor that she is very very short of breath and could not lay down and could not walk at all because of the extreme shortness of breath. I then asked her if it was OK if I could examine her. I had my stethoscope with me and I listened to her heart and there were very, very loud murmurs, and I felt that she had multiple valor dysfunctions probably related to a previous bout of dramatic fever, and subsequent rheumatic heart disease. I talked to her about this and told her there was a possibility of having surgery. I did tell her the risks were very, very high to operate on her since she was so malnourished and in severe congestive heart failure. She told me though that she wanted to have the operation and that “Jesus was gonna give me the feet to walk out of the hospital“. I thought about it for a while, prayed with her, and agreed to transfer her from Haiti to Santiago Dominican Republic, where we were operating on children’s hearts.

She made the trip over to Santiago and was again very short of breath. The surgeon and I discussed not doing the heart operation because of the high chance of her dying now. She wanted us to do the surgery so we did. She had two cardiac arrests during the operation and we were able to successfully resuscitate her. When she left the operating room, she was very sick. She was on a ventilator and was on medication to raise her very very low blood pressure. As you can see from the first picture that I enclosed. She looked as though she was dying. And others sat around her bed and all prayed for her and kissed her soft cheeks. We then just washed her the next day. She was able to come off of the ventilator, but still looked gravely ill. That’s the second of the three pictures. The very next day was really a miracle; she looked great. We exchanged her Hospital Gown for a “pillow dress“ that a lady supplied us. She made many many of these “pillow dresses“ and I gave her one and that is the dress she’s wearing in the last picture. I was really overwhelmed by the way she looked in her attitude. She was able to stay in the hospital a couple more days and then we returned her to her Home in Haiti. God‘s power was just so overwhelming that I felt the need to record this and that’s what I’ve done.

Trip Gallery

Dr. Clint Doiron praying with a sick Edna prior to her operation hoping that Jesus would help save Edna and give her the “feet to walk out of the hospital”

Edna in her “pillow dress” two days after her operation