USNS Comfort's crew returns from Port-au-Prince
Navy hospital ship's staff reflects on journey to help Haiti's earthquake victims
Capt. Daniel Shmorhun, 47, was surrounded by water for 60 days, but his U.S. Navy hospital ship was a "dry" boat. So when the pediatrician returned from Haiti to his Kensington home over the weekend, the first thing he did is hardly surprising.
"I had a cold beer," Shmorhun said with a laugh.
The Comfort treated 871 patients during its mission, according to information from U.S. Southern Command, which had operational control of the ship. Doctors aboard the Comfort performed 843 surgeries. The last earthquake victim was discharged from the boat Feb. 27. Nine babies were born on the Comfort. Twenty-nine patients died.
Now crew members are adjusting to life on shore with their friends and families, even as the Comfort, its patients and their U.S. Navy colleagues remain fresh in their minds.
"I was jumping up and down, I was excited. I was so excited. I miss him," said Rosalyn Roberts of Bowie, wife of Chief Petty Officer Dave Roberts, on Thursday as she awaited his return on the Comfort. "He's my best friend, and it's weird when he's not home because I don't sleep well. I did e-mail him and tell him that I was glad he was coming home. I told him it was on the news, and that I can't wait to see him."
Despite his extended time aboard ship, her plans for the two of them to take a cruise ship vacation haven't changed.
People on board the Comfort heard that their mission was over on the afternoon of March 9, and that they were returning to the United States. That same evening, the ship pulled up its anchor and began its journey home, leaving a lot of time for Germantown's Alayna Schwartz, 28, a nurse aboard the ship, to spend time up on the Comfort's flight deck, where so many of her patients had arrived on board, and reflect on her journey.
At one point during the mission, Schwartz and other personnel joined ship's chaplain Cmdr. Dave Oravec of Frederick on a trip to the Comfort's pediatric ward, a refreshing change.
"We had a guitar, and we just sang. We sang a couple of praise songs. That sticks out in my mind, because being an operating room nurse, a lot of times my patients are asleep when we're doing our cases on them," Schwartz said. "We see them before and after. But I don't often get to see them up, awake, laughing and smiling."
After spending a night in Norfolk with friends, she was picked up on Sunday by her boyfriend, Doug Cole, on Sunday, an hour earlier than she expected – Schwartz was sufficiently detached from the everyday world on board the Comfort that she forgot daylight saving time. She brought Cole, who also works at Navy Med, on board ship and showed him the bank of phones where she had spent much of her time talking to him. His daughter from a previous relationship baked him a "Welcome Home" cake, and they went out to dinner on Sunday night.
Schwartz has "a hundred things at once" she'd like to do around the house, since she doesn't have to be back at Navy Med until Thursday. But she is already looking forward to reunions.
"I'm excited to see everyone that was on the mission with me coming back to Bethesda," Schwartz said. "No matter what you see, you know you can approach it with confidence because of what you experienced in Haiti."
A patient administrator at Navy Med, Lt. j.g. Anwar Hassan Hildid of North Bethesda was thrust into an unfamiliar role as translator aboard the Comfort because of the French he had learned during his childhood in Somalia.
He helped out in reunifications between young patients who came on board without adult escorts, and their families; he also helped connect Navy personnel with Haitian roots with their family members on shore.
"I never expected the role of being between the patients and the providers," said Hassan Hildid, who turned 40 on Feb. 15 aboard the Comfort sans birthday cake or big celebration.
Instead of a cake, Hassan Hildid was treated to the fact that his driver's license expired while he was at sea, a problem that he was trying to fix on Monday. He was already enjoying sleeping in his own bed, "not getting in line to do laundry, not getting in line to eat." But other things are harder to leave.
"In the Navy, it's always mixed feelings. You make friends in a very short period of time, and a lot of friends in that period of time," he said.
Not all local support came from the Comfort.
Cmdr. Gettie Audain, an officer with the U.S. Public Health Service in Rockville and a Clarksburg resident, had her normal deployment time of two weeks extended so she could help with disaster relief efforts. The deployment took her to medical evacuation stations and the U.S. Embassy as a translator and support team member for emergency workers.
Even after she returned to the United States on Feb. 3 and took more than a week off from work, she still found herself adjusting to life without hearing the sound of helicopters, running to help at a moment's notice and helping a woman deliver a baby at 5 a.m.
Now she finds herself appreciating things she took for granted, such as her home and her ability to get prescription drugs. A colleague in an elevator with her recently remarked how peaceful Audain looked.
"I became very humbled that I had really nothing to complain about. I felt myself more aware about all the stuff that I have," said Audain, who left two sons at home to go to Haiti.
While she waited two months for husband Daniel to return, Lynn Shmorhun had to make arrangements with neighbors and a babysitter to look after her daughter, Katya, a third-grade student at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart next door to Navy Med, while she worked late hours as a veterinarian. She had to shovel out from the February snowstorms without her husband, and her hands are still recovering from those efforts.
Meanwhile, Katya – now 9 and too young to have strong memories of when her dad was deployed to Kuwait in 2003 for military operations in Iraq – asked several times a day when her father was coming home.
But all that difficulty receded into the background when Daniel Shmorhun saw his daughter at home in Kensington Saturday night. She jumped into his arms and didn't leave them for quite some time.
"She was crying. I don't know if she's ever done that before," Lynn Shmorhun said.
The family still had ‘Welcome Home' decorations from Daniel Shmorhun's return from Kuwait in 2004, and they were planning a small celebration with friends this Saturday. Enjoying a cold beer and the comforts of home didn't stop Shmorhun from working out on Monday and investigating what the snowstorms had done to his home's landscaping.
He planned to catch up with his daughter about her life, and eventually talk with his wife about what he saw and did.
On Jan. 26, a baby boy born the day before the earthquake struck Haiti was brought on board the Comfort with his mother. He was severely malnourished, developed an infection in his intestinal tract and died about four days later. This patient in particular has stuck with Shmorhun, and his challenge is to put the image of this child out of his mind once he returns to his normal life at Navy Med, dealing with his regular patients and teaching younger doctors about the challenges they may face.
"Work is work, and Haiti was Haiti. It's just very difficult to try to equate the two. They're just very different experiences," he said. "You can't really explain it without having lived it."
-871 patients treated
-843 surgeries performed
-29 patients died
-9 babies born
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