Halfway to Haiti, on a plane to pick up two Ben Avon sisters and the orphans in their care, Deb Bohan decided she wouldn't be catching the flight back.

The Bethel Park resident, who is a physician's assistant in pediatric critical care at Allegheny General Hospital's Suburban Campus in Bellevue, had only her toothbrush and the clothes she was wearing.

But when she found out a fellow AGH employee, Dr. Chip Lambert, was planning to stay behind to deliver medical supplies and provide patient care on the earthquake-devastated island, she volunteered to stay with him.

"I had never done anything like it," she said. "I had always wanted to." She noted that she was able to make the spur-of-the-moment decision in part because she is single and does not have children.

Over the next week, Ms. Bohan, 44, would travel along cracked roads, watch helplessly as a teenager died under her care and name a baby who was born two weeks after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake.

Staying, Ms. Bohan said, was "probably one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life."

Her arrival in Haiti was just a footnote in a story that made international headlines. Two Ben Avon sisters pleaded for a rescue for the orphans under their care. A plane was dispatched Jan. 18 from Pittsburgh International Airport, carrying Gov. Ed Rendell, Congressman Jason Altmire and medical staff, including Ms. Bohan.

When a plane departed Port-au-Prince with the orphans aboard, Ms. Bohan and Dr. Lambert stayed behind. They spent the night on the tarmac, guarding two tons of medical supplies bound for Leogane.

The next afternoon, they left the airport with the supplies loaded in a dump truck and accompanied by an armed security team. As they departed the airport, Ms. Bohan said she saw less destruction than she expected but was shocked by the trash, the smell and the crowded conditions.

"The Haitian next to me was like, 'This isn't because of the earthquake,' " she said. " 'This is the way it always was.' "

After an 18-mile drive west to Leogane that took nearly two hours, Ms. Bohan and Dr. Lambert pulled into the gated nursing school compound at the end of a roadway surrounded by makeshift shelters.

The hospital in Leogane was severely damaged, so people had come to the nursing school to seek help. With the Haitian staff at the hospital, they unloaded the supplies, which were donated by Brother's Brother Foundation on Pittsburgh's North Side.

The next morning, Ms. Bohan awoke to a 6.0-magnitude earthquake.

"From that point on, I was like, 'OK, things could be a little more dangerous than I thought,' " she said. "But everyone kind of picked up and went about their business."

They set up an outdoor hospital and began treating wounds, cuts and open fractures. They had to perform several amputations.

"There were things I would look at and say, 'How did they make it one week without any medical care, and not be septic with terrible blood infections?' " she said.

With limited supplies, they treated about 150 patients a day, Ms. Bohan said.

One day, a 2-year-old girl with asthma came in. The makeshift hospital didn't have all the medical equipment needed to stop the asthma attack from escalating, but health care workers made do, and over the next few hours, Ms. Bohan saw improvement. By the end of the day, the child was fine.

Another story didn't end so well. A 17-year-old was brought to the hospital by her parents one afternoon. She was newly diabetic, and her blood sugar was too high. Her parents were worried, but Ms. Bohan reassured them.

"Right away, I said, 'No, no, no, it looks bad now, but we are going to give her this and that and then she'll get better,' " she said. "And then I found out we had no insulin."

They tried giving her fluids, and for a while she responded well, but then her condition grew drastically worse.

"I thought, this would never happen in America. And I know it is a Third World country, and I know it happens all the time," she said. "I guess I was just frustrated with myself because I told them it would be OK."

The girl, Angeline, died soon after. Her mother thanked Ms. Bohan for her attempts.

"The gratitude of them, in spite of losing their children and loved ones, that I'll never forget," she said.

Ms. Bohan returned to Pittsburgh on Jan. 27. She went to work the following day, and now is involved in the care of a Haitian boy brought to Pittsburgh for treatment of bone cancer.

Ms. Bohan said she wants to return to Haiti in a few weeks. She was heartened to see, shortly before she left Leogane, the Haitians dressing in their best clothes to attend Sunday church services.

"They weren't wallowing in self-pity," she said. "They were moving on."

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