It has been almost two months since a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti.
Four days later, Forest Park Medical Center in Dallas sent a team of health care professionals to help.
Today's Our Neighbor brings you the story of one surgeon who answered the call.
Like a battlefield surgeon, Dr. Bob Peters went into the 'war zone of despair,' in Haiti.
Although in many cases, he lost his battles, he deserves a medal for his valiant effort to save lives.
"The types of injuries we were seeing were catastrophic and many patients had already died but those that did not, had very severe injuries, with very little attention given to them up to that point," he said.
Dr. Peters was part of a volunteer team from Forest Park Medical Center which mobilized just 36 hours after the quake.
Accustomed to complicated surgeries here in North Texas, Dr. Peters remains haunted by the horrendous crisis conditions he and his team were forced to work in.
"We are doing amputations in the parking lot of a hospital and in the open air. These are uncontrolled situations that we know have to be done but it's much more like civil war medicine," he said.
Perhaps the more poignant case to him and our viewers who saw it - the woman who had a simple request. She wanted her legs saved.
"It's a very sad story because she had just given birth a few months prior that she was always telling us about. We were not able to save her legs," he said.
But they did save her life.
Yet through her pain and loss, the woman asked Dr. Peters to take a picture with her.
"The pictures, both physical pictures, and the ones we have in our mind, it's a real defining moment," he said.
For defining what true caring by a medical professional looks like, we name Dr. Peters and every member of the Forest Park Medical Center team Our Neighbor.
E-mail cizaguirre@wfaa.com
