ENGLEWOOD — Two nurses from Englewood Hospital and Medical Center returned Friday from Haiti, where they spent an emotionally intense 17 days treating hundreds wounded in a massive earthquake.

Surrounded by their fellow nurses, Cathi Goldfischer and Arlene Keys, who have worked in the hospital’s Emergency Room for more than two decades, held back tears as they described the hundreds of patients who walked several miles searching for help, often with open wounds severely infected with gangrene.

"A woman brought in her young child with a terrible wound, and I debrided it, gave her 10 milligrams of morphine and they walked back home, more than five miles away," Keys said.

"In the U.S., that little girl would have been admitted, but they just walked home, and came back two days later so I could dress the wound again," she said.

The nurses were deployed to the earthquake-ravaged country as part of the NJ-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Goldfischer, who has worked in disaster zones within the United States, is a nursing section chief in the organization.

But before her deployment this month, Keys had never worked in a disaster zone. She had never even been camping before, she said, so the experience was life-changing.

For more than two weeks, they slept side by side in sleeping bags among hundreds of medical workers on an open tennis court in Petionville, less than 40 miles outside of Port-au-Prince, and awoke every morning at 5 a.m. to the sound of a crowing rooster.

They had some water and Cheese Whiz for breakfast, and then spent some

16 hours a day debriding severely infected wounds, delivering babies, and setting fractures. Some would remain in the tented hospital facility, and others would walk down to the bottom of a steep hill, where several hundred families were camped out in cardboard boxes and tents, many unable to walk from injuries suffered in the quake.

The medical team was escorted by military personnel at all times to prevent from being mauled, Goldfischer said.

"When word spread that there was medical care, we were inundated by people with traumatic amputations, spinal cord injuries, open wounds that couldn’t be closed...it was heart-wrenching," Goldfischer said.

Two women gave birth in the hospital tent last week, and within a matter of hours, they walked back down the hill to the camp, babies in their arms.

The nurses taught a man who lost his wife in the rubble how to care for his two and half week old daughter.

They treated hundreds of infants, toddlers and adolescents who were orphaned in the earthquake.

But while the women saw indescribable devastation, they also witnessed an overwhelming amount of kindness, gratitude and strength, often from those who lost the most in the disaster.

"They would sometimes walk five miles up the hill to see us...some people had horrible injuries...and I don’t think I ever treated anyone without getting a thank you," said a red-eyed Keys.

"All I heard was, ‘Merci, merci, merci," she said.