07/08/2007

Special to the Record-Eagle
Colleen Haley catches a ride in Honduras, where she is teaching at a bilingual school in Copan Ruinas.

Not lost in translation: A minister's life

Traverse City woman plays lifesaving role in Honduras

By Tom Carr

tcarr@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — Speaking Spanish enables Colleen Haley to teach children in Honduras. It also may have helped save a visiting minister's life when he was hit by a motorcycle this spring.

"There was a handful of people who knew bits of Spanish or bits of English, but I was the only bilingual person on the scene,” wrote Haley in an e-mail interview.

A 2000 graduate of Traverse City West Senior High School, Haley is a 2004 graduate of the University of Michigan, where she majored in comparative literature and Spanish. The 24-year-old teaches at a bilingual school in Copán Ruinas, a city known for its Mayan ruins, and was there to help doctors with the Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity. Sponsored by Lions and Rotary clubs, the program has eye doctors and dentists offering their services to more than 1,000 impoverished Hondurans.

Haley's friend, Kimberly Dowdney, is a dental technician from Traverse City who was among the team of 29 people making the trip. She had e-mailed Haley to see if she could meet them in La Esperanza to help translate between doctors and patients.

While the team of doctors was there, Mike Loenshal, a Presbyterian minister from Ithaca, was hit from behind by the motorcycle as he and others were walking in the street because of narrow and inconsistent sidewalks in downtown La Esperanza, a city of about 13,000.

"The impact was very solid,” said dentist Dale Nester of Ithaca, who was near when the accident happened.

Loenshal was unconscious, and Nester first thought he was dead.

He and others yelled for help, and someone with a pickup truck backed up. They loaded him in the back of the truck to take him to the nearest hospital.

After the accident, Dowdney ran from the accident to the hotel and found Haley. Haley stayed with Loenshal, following him around to hospitals for about the next day-and-a-half.

Medical workers knew Loenshal had a closed head injury, which they later found out was a base skull fracture and brain bruises.

"As soon as we boarded the ambulance, the people at the U.S. Army base called us, and from there we arranged a helicopter pickup,” Haley wrote.

"In the first hospital, in La Esperanza, there was a lot of confusion regarding Mike's transport to Tegucigalpa.”

Tegucigalpa is the country's capital and largest city, with a population of more than 775,000.

"We knew we needed to get him there, but we weren't sure if we had the contacts and phone numbers to arrange for a helicopter transport, or if that was medically safe.”

While there, Haley translated messages from the police, the U.S. Embassy and members of the visiting team of doctors. On the first ambulance in La Esperanza, she took orders from Soto Cano Military Base in Comayagua, Honduras.

"All communication from the U.S. Army officers who organized the helicopter transport went through me, so you could say I landed the helicopter,” she wrote. "I chose the location, I translated instructions to the police and medics, and I was the sole translator when the officer got off the helicopter to help us.”

Robert Foote, a Traverse City optometrist who was one of the doctors on the trip, praised Haley's role.

"Everyone was very helpful, but because Colleen could speak with the doctors and directly to the insurance people in the U.S., I am convinced arrangements for the air ambulance occurred at least 24 hours sooner than they would have without her help,” he said.

Haley gained a lot of confidence in her Spanish that night, yet the episode was "much more than scary,” she wrote.

"It was an intense experience. Mike and I had only spoken briefly during the couple days I was working with the medical brigade, so I barely knew him. Despite that, I was, in many ways, responsible for his life.”

She even acted as "next-of-kin” in the first Tegucigalpa hospital, and was responsible for translating communications for medical decisions and with his two insurance companies. And it was not like the hospitals she was used to seeing in the states.

"The public hospital in Tegucigalpa was definitely scary,” she wrote.

She had to move Loenshal from bed to bed for X-rays and scans and hold bloody vials.

The entire four hours she was there, she had to stand next to a dead man, she said.

"They'd thrown a towel over him to mask the smell, but it wasn't pleasant,” she added.

She saw nurses trying to figure out whose blood was in bags on a cot and medics looked at her "strangely” when she asked where she could wash her hands after holding the vials.

"Our money and connections allowed us to improve our situation,” she wrote. "Mike was transported to a very clean, organized and dependable hospital later on that night.”

Loenshal is in an adult foster care home and has regular weekend passes to go home.

"He's capable of carrying on a very good conversation at this point, which was not true a month ago,” Foote said, adding Haley gets a good deal of credit for that.

"Colleen is an outstanding young woman and greatly assisted in getting Mike the medical care he so desperately needed to save his life,” Foote said.