Even though Amanda Cox heard earthquake aftershocks every 48 hours while she was in Haiti, the Evergreen Medical Center Emergency Department nurse never got used to them.

There was no time to panic either: Cox’s group of 14 medics had a policy that during or after any earthquake they went to a meeting place with their passports and safety gear on them for roll call from their command staff. Sometimes it happened at night.

“It is a bit nerve racking to have to spring off your sleeping cot (and) dodge underneath your mosquito netting while putting on a hard hat and steel toe boots in the middle of the night,” Cox said. 

Cox, who has worked at Evergreen Hospital for six years since graduating from nursing school, went to Haiti as a member of the International Medical Surgical Response team. It functions under the Department of Health and Human Services National Disaster Medical System (NDMS). Once put on a 48-hour alert, the 75-member team got military orders to go to the country under the 82nd Airborne Division. Cox went with the first wave of NDMS members and was gone for two weeks until her rotation ended on Feb 4.

“We have to make arrangements with anyone who is in the military (or receiving orders),” said Sherry Grindeland, media coordinator for Evergreen. “We’re very supportive of our military people.”

Cox’s NDMS team has seen more than 26,100 patients, performed 111 surgeries and delivered 31 babies since Feb. 6, according to an NDMS administrative officer. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that rocked Haiti on Jan. 12 has left an estimated 230,000 dead.

Cox admits she was nervous when she got the briefing from a social worker before arriving in the country.

“We were told we were going to provide the best care that we can but not in the best situation,” Cox said. “I tried to prepare myself mentally but I questioned whether I wanted to go.”

Cox left for Haiti at 2 a.m. on a charter flight to her post at Gheskio Center hospital in Port-Au-Prince – the site of a run-down university. Upon arriving in the city, Cox said she saw Haitians selling food and goods at the local markets. It appeared like everyday activities.

She was a member of the strike team that responds to the needs of patients: inserting IV’s and breathing tubes, transporting them to helicopters to board the USS Comfort ship and other duties.

Other times it got more hectic. Cox’s medical team rescued a man from the earthquake rubble and treated a femur fracture. They treated patients with tuberculosis, rabies and typhoid.

During her trip, Cox held a 7 day old baby in her arms that died from tetanus.

“As sad as that was, a happy moment came too,” she said in an e-mail.

They also delivered a baby girl, a new experience for Cox. The mother, who was having seizures, was airlifted to the ship with her newborn.

The group’s makeshift hospital saw up to 150 patients per day in the 90 degree heat.

Because of the lack of resources, sometimes the medical team had to improvise. Cox recalls one young boy who came in with heart failure and there was no cardiologist available. So Cox and her team looked at the heart with an ultrasound machine and e-mailed the pictures of the electrocardiogram to a cardiologist in Virginia. The doctor determined the boy had a case of Rheumatic fever and they were able to treat him.

Cox also remembers a woman who told her that if she saved her son, Cox would go to heaven.

“They feel it’s (religion) the only thing that can keep them alive,” Cox said. “She didn’t understand that he (the son) was critically injured on the inside. They could only see what was on the outside.”

Cox’s NMDS unit is still in Haiti, but the medical need is returning to routine care.

“Haiti has a lot of work to do in order to establish normalcy, better their living conditions, and improve their medical care,” Cox wrote in an e-mail. “People still need care. Illnesses and medical needs don’t just stop because a disaster happened … Haiti needs their everyday hospitals up and running and seeing patients.”

Cox does not think she will go back to Haiti, but she would like to.

“It’s bittersweet,” Cox said. “I saw a lot of horrible things, but at the same time, it was rewarding.”