Helpless in Haiti
"What was going through your head?" I've been asked that question multiple times since last weekend, when The CBS Evening News aired my segment about Haiti's decimated healthcare system. The question refers to the moment when I watched a nurse in northern Haiti remove a clinic's only oxygen machine from a premature baby in order to give it to a woman suffering in labor, her baby's heartbeat faltering.
As a physician, I've felt helpless many, many times. This was different. For this week's CBS Doc Dot Com, I try to explain what was going through my head: