(CNN) -- Hours after January 12's earthquake in Haiti, Drs. Claude and Yolene Surena were treating more than 100 wounded people -- not in a medical facility but outside their own Port-au-Prince home.





City medical facilities were decimated or overwhelmed, and makeshift triage areas like the one in the Surenas' yard tried to keep patients alive long enough to get the next available hospital bed. Yolene called her daughter in Maryland to assure her the couple was fine and to make a request.





"She was overwhelmed with patients," said Fabiola Surena, a 28-year-old U.S. Army staff sergeant studying to be a physician's assistant. "She needed me to come help."





Surena and eight U.S.-based relatives and friends -- all of whom were raised in or have relatives in Haiti -- went to the Surenas' Haiti home to assist the doctors, deliver food and first-aid supplies, and to see how their loved ones fared.





Surena, who was granted time off from the Army, and her cousin Anne-Rene Louis have been documenting their trip on CNN's iReport.com. They talked to CNN.com by phone on Thursday, their seventh day in Haiti; the group planned to return to the United States this weekend.





iReport.com: Fabiola and Anne-Rene's journey to Haiti





The nine, none of whom had any medical experience except for Surena, flew to the Dominican Republic and traveled by bus to Haiti's capital on January 15. At the Surenas' house, one of the few in the neighborhood that didn't collapse, patients were in bad shape.





"I've seen crushed bones, fractures, dislocations, a lot of lacerations. We've had kids who lost digits," Fabiola Surena said. "We've also had people just suffering from just diabetes or high blood pressure, whose medication was stuck in their [destroyed] house, so they're going into diabetic comas."





Many patients needed surgery, but the one surgeon assisting the couple had no post-school experience. The Surenas' home, stocked mostly with first aid and suture kits and over-the-counter medications, had "no surgical capabilities outside of sutures," Fabiola Surena said.





Because surgeries couldn't be done immediately and infection was setting in, many patients would need amputation later. A few people died before Surena's group arrived, and one has died since, after being moved to a hospital, she said.





iReport: List of missing, found | Are you there?





Fabiola Surena dressed bandages and took vital signs. The other eight from the U.S. made sure patients took medication, sterilized tools and did small dressing changes. The crew also tried to find hospitals that could take the critical patients, she said.





Patients rest on mattresses in the yard, covered by tents. Food, water and medical supplies, though bolstered by trips to the Dominican Republic and aid brought by others, are constantly low. The family eats whatever it serves to the patients -- perhaps rice, beans and tuna -- and sometimes it's just one meal, Surena said.





"We're basically out of painkillers. We receive a lot of medication for adults, but not for kids, so children are barely getting painkillers at all," she said.





Surena, who was born in New York but was raised in Haiti, says her feelings are difficult to put in words.





"It can be very depressing," she said in Port-au-Prince, in and around which tens of thousands were killed in the quake. "After a while, you're looking at the things you can't do. ... Some people beg for water, and we don't have water for us to drink."





"People look calm and try to go on with life and joke, but then a scared, panicked look comes over their faces when a helicopter flies overhead, because it sounds like an aftershock," she added.





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Haitians took the wounded to the Surenas' house after the quake because they knew they were doctors.
What remain constantly low? What do the doctors turn their home into? Who turned their home into a makeshift clinic after quake? Who arrived to help? Who arrived to help the doctors? What is constantly low?
Food, water and medical supplies, makeshift triage areas Drs. Claude and Yolene Surena and eight U.S.-based relatives and friends Surena and eight U.S.-based relatives and friends Food, water
question: What remain constantly low?, answer: Food, water and medical supplies, | question: What do the doctors turn their home into?, answer: makeshift triage areas | question: Who turned their home into a makeshift clinic after quake?, answer: Drs. Claude and Yolene Surena | question: Who arrived to help?, answer: and eight U.S.-based relatives and friends | question: Who arrived to help the doctors?, answer: Surena and eight U.S.-based relatives and friends | question: What is constantly low?, answer: Food, water