Special to the Tri-State DefenderNEW HAVEN – Medical professional and Scientology Volunteer Minister Ayal Lindeman, working in Haiti since shortly after the January 12 earthquake, is keeping the promise he made to a Haitian man whose leg was amputated to save his life.
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Ralph Mary-Gedeon (left) and Ayal Lindeman. (Photo by Randi Sidman-Moore)
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Ralph-Mary Gedeon, 22, was attending classes at a Port-au-Prince engineering school when the school collapsed in the earthquake, burying him alive. His father, Raphael Gedeon, rushed to the school and frantically climbed through the mountains of fallen building, calling his son’s name over and over until he heard a cry from the rubble.
For hours, Raphael Gedeon used his hands to try to dig his son out. Unable to move the heavy debris, he ran for help. With friends, they dug through the concrete, metal and dust. Not until a day and a half later did they finally reach Gedeon’s son.
Seriously injured and his left leg crushed, they took him to General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, where he met Ayal Lindeman.
A licensed practical nurse, emergency medical technician and Scientology volunteer minister trained in disaster relief, Lindeman had arrived in Haiti just days after the quake. He came aboard one of the first Scientology-sponsored transport planes allowed into the country. The planes brought more than 100 Haitian doctors, nurses and EMTs and a support corps of volunteer ministers to assist them in providing medical care.
Lindeman was assigned to head the organization of the intensive care unit of General Hospital. A veteran of 9/11 Ground Zero rescue operations, hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and other worst-case disasters, Lindeman pulled together a team of medical professionals and Scientology volunteer ministers. The team started cleaning up the wards and organizing supply lines and prioritizing patient care for the overworked doctors. While the doctors were battling to save lives in primitive operating rooms, Lindeman and his team attended to patients lying on bare mattresses soiled with body waste and blood, some who had gone days without food or water.
Lindeman noticed Ralph-Mary Gedeon and his father, Raphael Gedeon, who never left his son’s side. Lindeman knew that even the massive doses of antibiotics Ralph Gedeon was taking would not save Gedeon’s leg. His kidneys were failing. Only amputating the leg would save him.
Life is tough for an amputee in Haiti and the younger Gedeon reasoned he surely would not be able to finish his engineering degree. He said he would rather die than live as an amputee.
“You have to live a long life because some day your dad is going to need you the way he is here for you,” Lindeman told Gedeon. Lindeman promised that if Gedeon went through with the surgery, he would personally see to it that he got a prosthetic leg and the physical and occupational therapy he would need to live a normal life.
Gedeion went through with the operation – a mid-thigh amputation.
To keep his word, Lindeman contacted an old high school track teammate, Dr. David Gibson, an orthopedic surgeon who teaches at Yale University and practices at the Hospital of Saint Raphael in New Haven. Dr. Gibson agreed to take on the case. The Hospital of Saint Raphael agreed to cover his hospital stay.
Lindeman then contacted the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading (ISTAT)/Airlink, which arranged for the owner of a private jet to bring Gedeon to the United States and obtained a medical visa for him. Lindeman and Gedeon arrived in Connecticut last week.
Gedeon has several additional operations and months of recovery to go through before he gets the prosthetic leg.
He is getting the chance because Lindeman chose to live out Scientology Volunteer Ministers Corps motto: “Something can be done about it.”
