Tales from Haiti: Johnny D.

I fell in love in Haiti. His name is John Doe. Johnny D. A boy without a name.

 

When he first arrived aboard the Navy hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, he was a wild feral child. A hunted, beaten look in his eye, he shunned human touch, responding like an injured, kicked animal. The only words he spoke were Creole curses, and he did not know his name, so the Navy affectionately called him Johnny D. John Doe. Abandoned outside a clinic in Port-au-Prince, he was rushed to the USNS Comfort for treatment. His scrawny limbs were smaller than an average 3-year-old's, and this tiny child appeared about 6 years old. A dental exam revealed that he was actually closer to 11 or 12.

 

Diagnosed with xeroderma pigmentosum (a cancerous genetic disorder in which the skin has difficulty repairing itself after exposure to sunlight), severe malnutrition and squamaus cell cancer of his right eye, Johnny D. had not only survived Haiti's devastating earthquake and his fatal condition, but this scrawny boy had also survived on the rough streets of Port-au-Prince without parents and without love.

 

At first, he acted like an abused animal, cursing the doctors and nurses as they held his deceptively strong, skinny body still for tests and treatments. Taking his food, he would go to a corner and squat, wolfing the meal off the floor. Refusing to be touched, Johnny D. neither laughed nor smiled. His tough young face and body was covered in pre-cancerous growths and his cancerous eye was removed. The skin on his thigh was grafted to cover his gaping eye socket. His bloody, painful bandages could only be changed after sedating him.

 

Slowly, love touched and transformed Johnny D. With intense one-on-one time and lots of affection from the nurses, corpsmen and translators, he opened up and completely changed. He began eating with a spoon. Then, he began eating off a plate ... then sitting down. He let nurses hold him, and soon he clung hungrily to anyone who would take him into their arms. I love that little boy so much. It was so incredible to watch how quickly he opened up.

 

I would hold him curled up in the fetal position on my lap for hours or carry him with me while caring for other patients. His broken body healed and his broken spirit was nourished. The other pediatric patients who had been intimidated and rather afraid of Johnny's volatile ways soon started playing with him. The Navy corpsmen taught Johnny to "fist bump" and he loved to greet everyone with his wasted little fist out for a "bump."

 

Forever engrained in my memory will be the sight of this little boy as he limped to the playroom and my tearful surprise as I started a movie to see him suddenly start dancing to the music. As the other kids started dancing and clapping, Johnny D. looked around and yelled with delight. Love bridges all boundaries and opens all hearts.

 

So many stories and faces haunt my mind and dwell within my heart: a toddler whose face was smashed; a teenage girl paralyzed from the chest down; the many children crushed by buildings with their hips and legs and arms held together by metal pins and rods; a young boy fighting sepsis from a deep infection in his broken legs; the flat affect of a tormented mother whose five children and husband had all been killed. The tragedy of Haiti's poverty has been magnified by the devastation of the earthquake, which destroyed what little these people had, leaving them injured, maimed and crippled, but not alone. The world has responded to beautiful, marred Haiti's plight. Struggling desperately against all odds, Haitians will need support and aid for years to come as they rebuild their country, their country that, as one Haitian woman described, fell on them.

 

The resilience and strength and beauty of the Haitian people is epitomized by the fragile, forgotten boy without a name, Johnny D. By the time he was healthy enough to go to an orphanage in Haiti after a few weeks on the Comfort, Johnny D. was a new child. He still has much to face and much against him. Haiti's position near the sunny equator puts Johnny at a severe disadvantage for surviving his rare skin condition, xeroderma pigmentosum, and his severe malnutrition makes normal growth, healing, and a healthy immune system very difficult. His risk for infection is very high. However, the love given to Johnny in the short time he was treated by the US Military and NGOs aboard the Comfort has proven that with love, healing is possible.