Father and son share life-changing experience in Haiti

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March 15, 2010

Pair joins medical team from Joplin in aftermath of devastating quake

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Mon Mar 15, 2010, 08:56 AM CDT

By Roger McKinney

rmckinney@joplinglobe.com

Probably few father and son experiences can compare with the one Jim and Tanner Riscoe shared in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Dr. Jim Riscoe, an emergency room physician at St. John’s Regional Medical Center, and Tanner, a 14-year-old freshman at McAuley Catholic High School, were part of a medical mission team in Haiti from Feb. 24 to March 2. The team was headed by Dr. Alan Buchele, a surgeon at St. John’s. The effort was part of Joplin Helps Haiti, which had organized two previous medical mission trips since the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Jim Riscoe said his son was a valuable part of the team.

“As a father, I was very proud, because everybody kept telling me what a good kid I had,” Riscoe said. “He did everything we asked. They treated him like an adult because he acted like an adult.”

Riscoe said his son filled some important and useful roles.

“Tanner wound up being kind of the de facto ambulance driver, driving patients from the clinic to the field hospital and back again,” he said.

“Mom wasn’t supposed to know that,” Tanner said, referring to his mother, who was nearby listening to the interview at their house.

“I know,” Jim Riscoe said, quickly moving on. “By doing that, he kept a doctor or nurse in service who otherwise would have to stop seeing patients.”

Riscoe said Tanner also facilitated communication among team members with his iPhone, because he had left behind walkie-talkies he had planned to take to Haiti.

“Kids can step up to the plate,” Jim Riscoe said.

“Oui”

Tanner said he had been texting his dad repeatedly about going on the mission to Haiti.

“I’ve always wanted to do a medical mission,” Tanner said. “I’ve always been interested in medicine. I’ve always wanted to do what my dad did.”

He wore down his father.

“Finally he sends me a text: ‘Oui,’” Tanner said.

He said he couldn’t think of a good response to text to his dad.

“I waited for him to get home and I hugged him,” Tanner said.

The team was based in a clinic at the Haitian Christian Mission in Fond Parisien, a few miles inside Haiti from the Dominican Republic.

‘Less than nothing’

Jim Riscoe said most of the trauma cases in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake had been treated.

“Quite honestly, that’s the easy part of medicine,” he said. “You know what to do there. What we’re getting into now is the hard part of trying to provide food, water, shelter and health care for a displaced population that didn’t have very much to begin with.

“Haiti had nothing, and now they have less than nothing.”

He said that sometimes as much as doctors, Haiti needs carpenters and plumbers.

Tanner said that even before going across the border from the Dominican Republic into Haiti, he had a memorable encounter with a young boy from Haiti who had lost an arm in the earthquake. He said the boy, around age 6, approached him asking for a toy.

Tanner said he didn’t have anything to give to the boy, but his father reminded him that his mom had filled a suitcase with inexpensive kites.

“In under a minute, he had it up in the air,” Tanner said. Then, he said, he was rushed by about 100 more children, seeking their own kites.

At the clinic in Fond Parisien, they went straight to work.

“You got awakened by the roosters at 4, by the dogs at 5, and the people started knocking on the gates at 6,” Jim Riscoe said. “By 8 o’clock the whole compound was filled, and the clinic started at 9.”

He said he worked using a stethoscope and a flashlight while wearing a baseball cap with a light on it. He treated a lot of children who were dehydrated from diarrhea. Other patients had high blood pressure and diabetes. There also were cases of scabies and pinworms.

One woman arrived to have her broken leg treated, but while treating her, Riscoe determined that she had breast cancer that had metastasized and was inoperable.

He also treated a 94-year-old woman who had been buried in rubble for eight days. She had a piece of glass in her eye.

Band-Aid

The field hospital was at an orphanage about four miles from the mission and the clinic. It housed patients recovering from operations and injuries who needed further treatment and time to heal. Riscoe said it was a tent city, with 10 rows of tents 14 rows deep.

At the field hospital were doctors from Ecuador and Brazil.

“At the Christian Mission, we actually had a better operating room capability that Dr. Buchele was able to organize with a full-time nurse anesthetist and a physician assistant,” Riscoe said. “He and the Ecuadorian surgeons were able to keep surgeries going about 12 hours a day for four or five days.”

He said the principal at McAuley was supportive of Tanner taking time out of school for the mission trip.

Tanner said the Haitian people are happy, kind and patient.

“We were at home there,” he said. “We felt safe there and very welcome.”

His father said it was hard to gauge how much the team accomplished. He said everyone had lost a close relative in the earthquake.

“We were a little bitty Band-Aid on a great big wound,” Jim Riscoe said.

He said the international cooperation is a promising aspect of the response.

“Haiti’s need is so deep and so structural that it can be a real model for how people can come together and cooperate,” he said.

Better than before

Dr. Jim Riscoe said he hopes Haiti can be rebuilt better than it was before.

“There’s no reason, other than total government corruption, that this shouldn’t be a paradise,” he said.