BOSTON -- A local nurse who grew up in Haiti working as a translator for American doctors who volunteered in Haitian medical clinics has now returned to her homeland on her second medical mission in the wake of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.

Nadia Raymond is a registered nurse at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

“When the disaster happened I knew I had to go,” said Raymond. She couldn’t believe the devastation, which she said was far worse than what she saw on television.

“Is this where I'm from?” she thought. “Is this really where I’m from? I just couldn't recognize anything.”

As a teenager, Raymond had worked as a translator for doctors who visited Haiti with the nonprofit Partners in Health. Now, she was volunteering to spend 17 straight days in her homeland, working in the Partners in Health clinic in Cange, Haiti.

“When you see another Haitian person, the first thing you do is you say, 'That could have been me. That could have been my mom or that could have been my dad.’ Then you get to a point where it's almost like you're floating. The reality is there but you can't quite accept it,” Raymond said

Then there are the patients whose stories Raymond can’t get out of her mind.

“There was a 23-year-old young lady that I took care of, frightened out of her mind and her condition was worsening. We ended up sending her to the U.S.S. Comfort, and the fear in her eyes I'll never forget it,” she said.

“Her brother came to me and said, ‘You know we haven't told her that her 3-year-old son died.’ I kept wondering, how is she going to handle this? How are they going to tell her? I looked at her and I told her, ‘God brought you this far, he'll carry you the rest of the way.’”

Fighting back tears, Raymond said, “It’s just the kind of thing that you say, ‘How did it get to this point?’ You don't know what else can you do and then you feel very helpless because it becomes overwhelming.”

“As a nurse I've dealt with a lot of situations where you have to stay in control. It's almost like you build a cocoon around yourself psychologically so you can deal with it and also give care to the patients. If you fall apart you can't be the best that you can be. So to tell the truth I saw it all, I took it in, and I kept it in,” she said.