Agnes Hyma cuddles a young patient in Haiti.

As a nurse for 35 years, Agnes Hyma is used to improvising.

But nothing quite beats assisting with surgeries in the lab of a walk-in clinic, or working in a high school-turned-makeshift hospital.

This former building is among the ruins caused by Haiti's devastating earthquake.

Those were the experiences the part-time Brock Nursing student experienced in March when she flew to Haiti to volunteer for two weeks.

Through Mission of Hope, she worked in cramped medical centres without refrigeration, enduring 14-hour days amidst earthquake devastation.

“You’re used to having the equipment you need,” said Hyma, shared education co-ordinator at West Haldimand General Hospital in Hagersville and West Lincoln General in Grimsby. “Patients are in beds. There are IV poles for IVs. You’re used to the basic things. Here, we had patients on mattresses on the floor. We got on our hands and knees to help them.”

Hyma, a Grimsby resident, had already done overseas nursing in Kenya. When the earthquake ravaged Haiti, killing more than 150,000, she contacted Mission of Hope, which she’d heard about from a co-worker. Initially, the medical focus was on first responders, she was told. But she got her immunizations and prepared for a potential absence from work. On March 3, she got the call to go.

Agnes Hyma, back at Brock

By March 6, she was on a plane to Port au Prince. She and 13 other volunteers were ushered through a cargo terminal at the capital’s broken airport. That day, she went to work, beginning two weeks of long shifts in Titanyen.

“We joked and said that if we worked this many hours back home, we’d make a ton of money,” Hyma said.

But the Haiti trip was about anything but money. Hyma paid for the trip herself, using up vacation days to go.

“I just felt the need to go and help,” she said. “The ordinary Joe living in (Haiti) is doing the best he can to survive. It inspired me about the resilience of people to come through tragedy and disaster.”

Hyma hopes to return in the fall if finances allow. She is studying for a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing.

Hyma checks on a patient at a clinic in Titanyen.

Link:
• Department of Nursing

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