Andrew Furey - Hope in the Balance: A Newfoundland Doctor Meets a World in Crisis

MY NAME IS Andrew Furey. Im an orthopedic surgeon and father of three. I live and work in St. Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador, the oldest part of the New World, as I like to call it. I dont consider myself a writer. But I have a story to tell you.

Its a story about coming face to face with the crumbing reality of complete despair. About choosing to put yourself in the middle of a dark chaos and then making a choice: run from it or do something about it. Sounds like an easy choice. A lot of us like to think wed choose the latter. We make that choice from the comfort of where we are, not knowing that the guts of it, the true messy shredded horror of it, sits in a dark place where few would ever shine a light, let alone step forward.

As the dust still filled the air of Port-au-Prince just days after an earthquake lay waste to the city, killing hundreds of thousands, injuring many more, taking a place from awful to so much worse, I chose to do something about it.

Maybe I was a bit naive at first. In over my head. I had no idea what this would all become. But I remembered something Id heard once along the lines of leap and the net will find you.

I have a story to tell you. A story of history, family, balance, and altruism. Its about how one idea changed so many lives, including mine.

The first time I went to Haiti was with a group from the University of Marylands medical school. Like most, I had seen on the news the devastation of the earthquake. As a doctor, my mind is trained to let the shock settle for only a second before I start determining a response. I knew I had to go there. I had to get up and leave the security of where I live and work, leave the responsibility of my wife and two young kids and seek out the hell that was so easy to just keep at arms length.

Haiti. One of the poorest countries in the world. The nation shares an island with a hugely popular vacation destination, yet its healthcare is virtually non-existent. Its political legacy is one of corruption. It is steeped in violence and ruled by the streets. These people have nothing, yet in a moment they lost so much more.

Team Broken Earth has its origin in the dust and devastation of Haiti. It was born out of necessity. After my first trip, I knew I needed to go back. We needed to go back. Like any medical response, this required a dedicated team.

This is a book about how a small group of medical professionals from Newfoundland and Labrador decided to make a long-term commitment to Haiti. Post-tragedy, the news feeds fill with stories of aid and people pitching in. Sadly, its usually only a short time before the attention shifts elsewhere. Thats not a judgment. Thats a reality of the world we live in. When the cameras go, so does the attention. This was Haitis reality. But when you factor in that this is one of the poorest countries in the world and its in our own backyard, its that much harder to turn away from it.

So we didnt.

In Haiti, we had our souls laid bare. We could work 24 /7 for the next ten years and still not make a dent in the ocean of need that separates Haiti from the rest of the world. But Team Broken Earth isnt about that.

One thing I realized early on as part of this team was to focus on the treatment if the cure eludes you. And it did in Haiti. Nothing could be taken for granted. Can you imagine a hospital that doesnt have clean water? Infrastructure was only one problem. The first of many.

In this book, I want to show how we came together as a team to bring hope, sustained hope, to those who needed it most. I want to show how the call to service started in Newfoundland and has grown to tap and inspire the desire to serve others in other areas throughout Canada and beyond.

Beyond that, this book is a search to answer the question, why? Why me? Why Newfoundland and Labrador? Why now? Is it more than a personal journey? Is it a genetic and geographic destiny?

I am a very lucky man. I have a family who are supportive and have helped guide me along as I now guide my children too. But like most families, our storied path has not always been smooth. Weve had our history, good and bad. It brought me to this point, shaped who I am. But the definition of who I am has now changed because of all this. Leaving one island to help another was not linear. I felt as if the Rock was somehow connected by the thinnest thread imaginable to the Republic of Haiti. A parallel, maybe. People. Place. Conflict. Triumph. Same geographic complications, different outcomes. Or maybe it was just me.

When I was growing up, I never thought about global health. It was not a topic at our dinner table. I always supported those in medical school who went to Africa, but it was not on my chip, not part of my life plan. But neither was a massive earthquake for those living in extreme poverty, a term I didnt appreciate until I was quite literally surrounded by it in Port-au-Prince.

This isnt a triumph story. The battle isnt over. But like the city from the earthquakes ashes, hope gets rebuilt. Hope grows. We grow. Team Broken Earth grew from three people in St. Johns to over a thousand from across Canada and it continues to expand to this day. Everyone giving up their vacation time, time with family and friends, to take on something that asks more than they ever thought they could give. But they did. And they still do.