Lewiston anesthesiologist Dr. Ron Chicoine, chief of anesthesiology at St. Mary’s in Lewiston, works with orthopedic surgeons from Brunswick to repair a broken arm at Missionaries of Charity in Les Cayes, Haiti, recently

Anesthesiologist Ron Chicoine, chief of anesthesiology at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, poses with one of his first patients, “Sneider,” who was recovering from his injuries at Missionaries of Charity in Les Cayes, Haiti, last week. The young Haitian had a fractured fibula/tibia.

The young woman had been pinned in the earthquake, her right leg freshly amputated below the knee. Her left leg was a mess, femur shattered. When Ron Chicoine saw her at (Hospital) Immaculee Conception, she’d been sitting for two weeks waiting for help.

“She was just amazing,” Chicoine said, even positioning herself onto the operating room table when surgeons were ready.

Mona Theriault remembers one 5-year-old boy who’d broken his wrist in a fall and sat in the waiting room, quiet, dripping blood on the floor, bone sticking out.

“There were a lot of stoic people there,” she said.

Chicoine and Theriault, both from St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center, and the other half of their volunteer medical team returned from a trip to Les Cayes, Haiti, last week. The team’s organizer, Cynthia DeSoi, got back Thursday.

They performed roughly 40 surgeries in six days, many on bones that had been broken and crushed in the earthquake that claimed nearly a quarter-million lives. Conditions were sparse. Surgeons wore head lamps when the hospital’s electricity cut out. Tools were soaked in buckets of bleach when the water cut out.

“In the OR, there was a light switch,” Chicoine said. “On the first day, I was sitting there waiting to start. I was looking at it; I thought they were little knots in the cord, but they were flies. I counted 25 flies when someone hit it and they all flew off.”

An anesthesiologist, he worked without an oxygen supply or a bank of modern equipment, instead using a manual blood pressure cuff to monitor patients.

The city they were in hadn’t taken a direct hit, but relatives brought quake victims from Port-au-Prince to Les Cayes for care. The population spoke French and Creole. The team relied on translators.

“It was difficult to find out if they were uncomfortable,” Chicoine said. “‘Ask them if it’s numb and tingly’ — that’s not easy to translate into Creole because it’s not something that they talk about.”

Theriault, a recovery room nurse who’d been on one mission to Haiti before, found herself without a recovery room in which to work.

“We’d put (patients) on the floor, on a rolled-up carpet in the corner,” she said.

Both said that, despite conditions, it was a rewarding experience. They were joined on the trip by Hector Rosquete and Stephen Katz, orthopaedic surgeons at Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick; Karmen Blackstone, a Mid Coast orthopaedic nurse practitioner, and DeSoi. They stayed in a guest house at the Pwoje Espwa Sud (Project Hope South) orphanage, where DeSoi, a local kidney doctor, volunteers as medical director.

She makes trips to Haiti several times a year.

“I just could not have asked for a better team,” DeSoi said.

Demand at the orphanage’s clinic has swelled after the quake, seeing up to 80 people a day instead of 25 to 30. She stayed a week longer to help out there.

Pwoje Espwa is led by the Rev. Marc Boisvert, a Lewiston native. He has seen a steady stream of new arrivals, DeSoi said. She got word Thursday that 100 children from Port-au-Prince, either orphaned or separated from parents, were on their way. They’d been cared for the past three weeks by American volunteers.

“They’re basically living under a tarp, and these folks had to go home,” DeSoi said.

The orphanage was willing to take them, bringing its count to more than 800 children. In the days after the deadly quake, they’d been contacted by another orphanage that had collapsed and asked to move its 100 children over.

“The first 100 didn’t come,” she said.

Their director, a man who’d grown up in that orphanage, changed his mind “because they were getting lots of attention on the side of the road.” Passing convoys and cars would stop and give money and food.

“He decided that was a better deal for the kids than coming to a place, long-term, with housing, clothing and education,” DeSoi said. “We’re thinking we may still, once the rainy seasons starts, we may hear from them.”

Back home, Lewiston people have been incredibly generous, she said, even driving up to her Main Street office to leave donations. DeSoi would like to start an amputee clinic in Les Cayes, in an empty building owned by the orphanage, perhaps tapping into resources at both hospitals here and other volunteer teams. Thousands of people are going to need help with physical and occupational therapy, she said, and building prosthetics “would be another vocational opportunity for our kids. It would be a whole new career opportunity” in a place where unemployment is rampant.

She estimated the start-up cost for that venture at up to $100,000. She drew up plans while in Haiti last weekend. It felt good to be there, instead of just seeing images on TV, DeSoi said.

“I have this really crazy idea of going back next week, but I don’t know if that can happen,” she said.

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