Cleburne Times Review: Rescue Mission – Missionary’s sons help ease suffering
Rescue mission – Missionary’s sons help ease suffering
By Steve Knight/reporter3@trcle.com
January 31, 2010
Keene resident John Griswell, a retired Seventh-day Adventist minister and missionary, is proud of his sons — doctors with years of experience in emergency medicine.
“They were raised in the mission field,” he said. “They love humanity. They hate suffering.”
Son David, 56, an emergency room doctor at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., just returned from Haiti.
Son, John III, 63, an emergency room doctor at Huguley Memorial Medical Center, arrived in Haiti Jan. 25 to relieve his brother.
John Griswell said David flew to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic immediately after hearing news of the earthquake.
While at the airport, David met Jake Wood, a former Marine who hastily put together a team of military professionals, Team Rubicon, specifically to go to Haiti, which needed doctors.
Because flights were delayed, they hired a bus to travel to the Jesuit novitiate compound, where they were assisted by the Jesuits.
David Griswell, who resides in Washington, D.C., described his initial reaction to the disaster in a blog entry on Team Rubicon’s Web site.
“I didn’t want to come to Haiti for this disaster. However, I was touched by the images coming out of Haiti, and I decided I would try to go,” he wrote.
“My colleagues from Emergency Medicine Associates pooled together and covered all my 10 shifts, and I came down hoping to dovetail with the Dominican Red Cross or some other group and cross over into Haiti. I met the leader of a group called Team Rubicon and joined them.”
John Griswell said he had a cellphone conversation with David after service was restored, and his son said Hurricane Mitch in Honduras was a picnic compared with the suffering in Haiti.
Hurricane Mitch, which hit Honduras Oct. 22, 1998, killed more than 9,000 people, according to National Hurricane Center report.
“I’ve seen a lot of poverty. I’ve done a lot of work in disasters. Never in my life have I seen anything that approximates this,” David told a Los Angeles-based KABC-TV reporter Jan. 19. “The worst of Mitch makes it look like a tea party. The people here are just suffering incredibly. No amount of aid is too much.”
After arriving in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, David took over the emergency room at General Hospital, the largest hospital in Haiti, where operations had been moved outside to escape falling debris.
“There were other physicians of other specialties doing a valiant effort of trying to do so without supplies, electricity or any ancillary services,” David wrote on the Team Rubicon blog. “I constantly felt like crying, and when I left for the day, I actually did cry. Every case was worse than the previous one. It is so frustrating to have to treat so many with so little while knowing that at the airport, there are a ton of supplies that aren’t being released.”
John Griswell said his son told him that amputations were performed without anesthesia, and a nurse told him they were using Motrin.
In a Jan. 20 interview with CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper, David expressed his frustration with lack of supplies.
“We have been here now several days working, and all these medical supplies and other equipment are sitting there at the tarmac at the airport, and they are not moving out. No one has fed these patients now in four days,” he said. “I just went up to the OR. They are working five cases in the same room. There’s no electricity there. I don’t know why somebody can’t hook up a power generator so they can start giving anesthesia to these people.”
In his last days in Haiti David relayed to his father that conditions were slowly improving, but the surgery was pitiful.
With all the pain and suffering, David concluded his Team Rubicon blog entry on a positive note.
“This is a great team, and I feel that there was divine intervention in bringing us all together. I think all of us will leave Haiti better people than when we arrived,” he wrote. “I also more than ever feel that individuals do make a difference. What we do for our fellow brothers and sisters does matter. We are all our brother’s keeper.”
The second Dr. Griswell arrives in Haiti
Dr. John Griswell III, medical director of the Emergency Physicians Advisory Board that oversees Medstar Emergency Medical Services in Tarrant County, arrived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Jan. 25 to relieve his brother.
The Johnson County resident, named a health care hero in 2008 by the Fort Worth Business Press, and Team Rubicon members treat hundreds of people daily, moving to different areas of the city setting up clinics.
Team Rubicon reported through its Web site Wednesday that they treated more than 200 people in a church parking lot where residents made homemade tents for shelter.
The elder Griswell said John III’s description of the situation was, “It’s just terrible,” in a recent phone conversation.
John III’s wife, Lynn, said her husband needs to be in Haiti right now.
“I was initially concerned about safety, but the team has security of their own,” she said. “Our lives are in [God’s] hands, and he is in control.”
She said that in a phone conversation on Jan. 26, John III told her the buildings and windows in downtown had many cracks, and they could see a body still lying in the street.
Most people live and sleep outdoors, still afraid that aftershocks will cause more damage.
She said he told her, “It is more devastating than you can imagine.”
Lynn said Team Rubicon medical teams are dressing and cleaning wounds and administering antibiotics, saving limbs from getting infected.
Wood, Team Rubicon co-founder, said on the Web site Thursday that operations are beginning to wind down, and they could not support any more volunteers or employ more personnel.
