Haitian earthquake victims find help and hope on LI

Mana Alexandre gazes at her 1-year-old son as he stands, wobbles, laughs and then falls into her arms. He's trying to learn to walk.

She is, too.

Alexandre, 22, had both her legs crushed during Haiti's Jan. 12 earthquake, and then amputated into jagged limbs by doctors working with few resources. Friday, she was in Port Jefferson getting her newly donated prosthetic legs adjusted and cared for by Richard and Christina Panetta, who is a physical therapist. The Oakdale couple has treated her and vowed to see her walk steadily.

"I want to run after my son," Alexandre said. "I want to dance. God saved me. God gave me a gift. I didn't die. I have a mouth to talk and a nose to smell. I'm blessed."

Alexandre is among dozens of people who have been brought to Long Island by Haitians and local residents to get treatment for injuries sustained in the earthquake, according to Dr. Louis Auguste, president of the New York Chapter of the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad.

Auguste, who has made two medical mission trips since the quake, said patients from Haiti come to the United States seeking medical resources that Haiti lacks.

"Anytime a person [in Haiti] has a condition that is beyond the most basic problem, the doctors say go abroad to be treated," Auguste said.

Alexandre's road to Long Island began in a makeshift outdoor hospital in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. There, she and more than 24 others lay under a hot tent waiting for their festering wounds to be mended. It is also where the Panettas were working as volunteers and noticed Alexandre.

Christina Panetta, 48, said Alexandre stuck out. "She was the cheerful girl who was smiling in spite of everything," she said. "She would sing and dance. She would even reach out and help us change other people's bandages."

When Alexandre was well enough to leave the hospital, the couple learned she had nowhere to go and decided to help. They got permission from both Haiti and the United States to bring Alexandre and her son, Wolf, to Long Island with them in April.

Last month, Alexandre received donated prosthetic legs on a trip to Florida. She returned to Long Island where orthotists at the office of Martin Mandelbaum in Port Jefferson have continued to adjust her new legs as she heals.

"The goal is to get her fully independent and able to chase her little guy when he's running," Mandelbaum said.

Alexandre is grateful. "They did a great thing for me," she said of the Panettas. "I would have been in misery if I stayed. They gave me a gift. They brought me to New York."

Myrianne Pierre, 37, of Port-au-Prince, also came to Long Island for help. Her leg was broken in two places during the quake and bone was exposed. For eight days, she traveled the streets of Haiti without drugs in search of treatment.

Pierre traveled by U.S. military plane to Stony Brook University Medical Center, where she got her leg mended. She spent six weeks in the hospital and now goes to the doctors there every two weeks.

"The fact that I am alive is enormous," she said. "I pray I can continue therapy and heal my leg."

Nicholas Divaris, the orthopedic surgeon who performed Pierre's surgery, said injuries like hers should be treated in fewer than six hours.

"There's no doubt if she stayed in Haiti she would have had her leg amputated," said Divaris, who managed to save her leg and insert screws and metal into the bone in the hopes of mending it.

Ornichleel Ulysse, 10, also injured in the quake, had her leg amputated in Haiti and was then flown to Long Island where A Step Ahead, a prosthetics and orthotics office in Hicksville, gave her a prosthetic leg.

According to Auguste, Haiti's wounded turn to other countries as a means of survival, but once healed, most people go home. "A lot of the Haitians are really attached" to Haiti, he said. "They really want to go back."

Alexandre is one of them. She hopes to go back to Haiti within a year and feels lucky to be alive. "I have two cousins who lost their lives," she said. "I lost two legs."

With Delthia Ricks