FORT PIERCE — Minutes after realizing his wife had a successful surgery, Dr. Wiwle Jean-Pierre sat emotionless on a hospital bed at Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute on Thursday as he took note of the destruction at his home and office in Port-au-Prince.

“I lost everything,” Jean-Pierre said calmly and directly while showing pictures of his Port-au-Prince hospital that was decimated from the recent earthquake. Jean-Pierre, 48, is the lead physician at the hospital.

Moline Jean-Pierre, the doctor’s wife, sustained her injury at that very hospital when it collapsed. She remained in Haiti for three weeks before a missionary group flew her and her husband to Fort Pierce, where doctors agreed to perform the necessary treatment for free.

Dr. Anjan Shah said relief surgeons in Haiti did a good job of stabilizing the leg and preventing infection. The pelvic bone also was broken. Shah said he plans to monitor the 47-year-old woman for the next few weeks, but expects a full recovery following the three-hour surgery.

“Her husband’s ability to take care of this wound as well as the surgeons that got to her and stabilized her are probably going to make the biggest difference in the fact that she’s going to save her leg,” Shah said.

The cost of the free treatment roughly would have been five figures, hospital spokeswoman Jana Eschbach said.

Now, Dr. Jean-Pierre said he is hoping for stabilization in his country, where his two young children remain. The hospital had been around for 10 years before collapsing three weeks ago.

“I have no house to live (in). My house fell down like the hospital,” Dr. Jean-Pierre said. “We have only God.”

The doctor spent Wednesday night in Fort Pierce, but hopes to get back to his children soon. The two children are American citizens, though the parents are not, but getting them on a plane is difficult, he said.

“My wife cries all the time,” Dr. Jean-Pierre said. “She wants to see the children. I don’t know how to help them get here so they can go to school. … We don’t know what to do. We continue to pray.”

Eric Pfahle, TCPalm.com

Tags: earthquake, fort pierce hospital, Haiti, surgery, victim

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