LDS doctor chronicles his relief efforts in Haiti

They raised him and then sent him on a mission to Haiti many years ago. Now a physician, Dr. Charles S. Peterson of Mesa, Ariz., is back in Haiti to help following the earthquake. So when his parents, Linda and George Peterson of Sandy, get e-mails from him or forwarded from his wife, Gayla, they pass them on to a growing list of people who are following the gut-wrenching action from a distance. He is working with a team in Jacmel and Leogane.

"Today, we continued our efforts with the Cubans," he wrote Thursday. "It is a remarkable, comical setup. You have the Mormons, the Cubans and the Mennonites. … They have joined up with us the past few days and have helped with crowd control and basic medicine and wraps. We are all in a little compound or school with hundreds of people lying around waiting for help. Back in Leogane the Canadians set up in the field where our choppers landed with us Monday. We are starting to see some great cooperation!"

The messages are chatty, tragic, hope-filled. He writes of an LDS bishop in Leogane who has provided a "great, secure place to sleep" with a generator that runs most of the time so they have fans. Church members feed them and one willingly transports them where they need to go. The new friend who lends Peterson his computer to write the e-mails at day's end lost an 11-year-old in the devastation.

"We came thinking that we would provide help for them and they have done nothing but serve us," Peterson said.

Many of the stories he shares involve amputations — fingers and toes and feet and legs. Peterson had to tell a good friend, a Haitian he's known since his mission days, that his brother's daughter might lose both legs. The girl's dad was just grateful she lived. In his Thursday update, he spoke of her little miracle: A group of Haitians came to the compound looking for six people to take to Port-au-Prince for immediate surgery. Peterson thought of the little girl, who was one of only two survivors when her school collapsed on her class of 34 students. He could not reach his friend on the "spotty" cell phone service, but as he tried, "a small SUV pulled up and it was her! I can assure you that there is no explanation for timing like that other than prayers. She got on the truck!"

Dr. Ray Price, a doctor who traveled to Haiti with the LDS humanitarian mission the Deseret News has been following, joined Peterson's group, while "a really nice German doc came over and held the flashlight for them for at least an hour so they could finish. Yes, we were doing surgeries in the dark. We had good flashlights!"

He wrote, "There was an 18-year-old girl who was home when the earthquake hit. Her whole family died except for her. She was hit in the head and has brain damage." She writhes and yells and hasn't slept for give days but, now orphaned, "her classmates from school have taken her in and cared for her, trading off day by day. Imagine someone requiring constant attention and not being able to sleep but they stick with her."

A nurse from St. George, he said, delivered a baby. She wasn't breathing and one of the doctors grabbed her and "tossed her around a bit then held her in the air and everyone cheered!

"... These are such great people." One of the doctors, he said, "has remarked many times how the kids and the people love to touch you: shake hands, hand on shoulder, hold your hand, etc. They are very endearing. The kids don't care that he doesn't know the language. They love to follow him around and smile at him, etc."

— Lois M. Collins