Anil Menon, MD is a clinical instructor at Stanford School of Medicine focused on surgery and emergency medicine. His research interests are Aerospace Medicine, Emergency Medicine, and Wilderness Medicine. He graduated from Stanford Med in 2006, received a degree in mechanical engineering in 2003 and became a full ER doctor in 2009. He has practiced medicin in combat in Afghanistan and will be practicing aerospace medicine next year at NASA. Menon is a flight surgeon assigned to the 173rd Fighter Wing (F-15s) of the Oregon Air National Guard, and he's part of a team sent to Haiti by Stanford. This entire series is chronicled under the HaitiDrDispatch tag
I received the following email from Anil on Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 04:09 (am). He wrote it at the end of his sixth full day in Haiti. I've made minor spelling and grammar corrections and have tried my best to fill in missing words using brackets. I've added hyperlinks where I thought they might help.
Guyta was helping me translate, and I looked for him before heading to the preop area. He spoke English well and told me his help at the hospital was "the price he was paying for surviving." In fact, no one from his family was hurt, and he felt guilty about his luck. He told me "I always felt I had one miracle to happen in my life, and it happened."
As we talked and collected our supplies, another after shock hit, and everyone bolted for the door. No ankles were broken, but it was clear no one would return to the indoors. One patient would later ask me if they would be in danger of the earthquake if they were transferred to the USNS Comfort medical ship.
It was good to know that today more help was on the way, more supplies, and better coordination with our experience. The pain medications did not have to be rationed. [The] IV fluid [was available?] for people more dehydrated than us, [and we had?] some food rations for patients and specialty surgical care that never existed [earlier this week?].
Anil S Menon
Sent from iPhone
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