CHAMPAIGN — In the past two years, Leanna Cossman has made five trips to Haiti to help care for the country's sick and suffering people.

And she's not done yet.

Cossman is preparing to make her sixth trip to Haiti in February with a small group planning to conduct medical training.

"I can't wait to get back," she said. "I feel I've been gone forever."

A 47-year-old mother of two and registered nurse for Urbana schools, Cossman made her first trip to Haiti right after its devastating earthquake of January 2010 to help with orthopedic injuries.

She returned in the spring of that year to help with emergency triage.

"I felt like I hadn't finished what I'd set out to do, that it was full-on crisis mode," she recalled.

Cossman, a Champaign resident, remembered the terrible suffering she witnessed on that second trip. She spoke vividly of one elderly woman lying inside a tent who was covered with maggots.

"No one would go near her," she said.

She scraped away the maggots and gave her a shot of Benadryl. The woman eventually died, Cossman said.

"I hope the medicine I gave her relieved her symptoms and gave her some peace," she said.

Cossman made her third trip to Haiti to help with the cholera outbreak in November 2010 and two more trips last year to help with emergency nursing, surgical education and ophthalmology procedures, she said.

She has vivid memories of the cholera mission, of severely dehydrated people and bodies in the street.

"I can say hell, if it exists, is the inside of a cholera tent," she said.

But one thing that keeps drawing her back to Haiti is love.

"I fell in love with the people of the country," she said. "It's amazing to see such resilience in the face of nothing."

Haiti has shifted from disaster response to recovery mode, Cossman said, and this sixth mission — set for Feb. 3-12 — will be focused on education.

Her group of four, sponsored by Jewish Healthcare International, will supply training in trauma care, life support and other areas requested by Justinian University Hospital in Cap-Haitien.

Jewish Healthcare International is a non-profit, non-sectarian organization that sends volunteer health care professionals to improve health care in at-risk areas around the world. Cossman is serving as the team leader for this mission, one of many missions to Haiti the organization has made since the 2010 earthquake, its Program Director Julie Kaminsky said.

Jewish Healthcare International's plan and goal is to continue sending in missions to improve health care in Haiti, and the organization hopes Cossman, as team leader, will help assess future needs after this trip, Kaminsky said.

Cossman is well-trained for the upcoming mission, said JHI's director, Dr. Stephen Kutner, who just went to Haiti to prepare for the February trip.

"She's a superb nurse," he said.

Cossman said her family has been supportive of her work in Haiti, though her husband, Ron, worries about her safety while she's away.

Her children, who also do volunteer work in the community, seem to understand, she said.

"I say there are kids in the world who have no mommies left, and you can share yours," she added.

The Cossmans have footed the cost of each of her past trips to Haiti themselves, but Leanna Cossman said she is fund-raising for this trip to help raise the $2,000-per-volunteer cost.

Anyone wishing to contribute can go to the Jewish Healthcare International website at http://www.jewishhealth careinternational.org. Click on donations, and in the box for additional information, type in her name and the upcoming Haiti mission.

Cossman wasn't new to disaster relief work when she went to Haiti the first time.

She organized a food drive after Hurricane Katrina and drove a truckload of food to Mississippi. Then she responded to the government's call for volunteer nurses to come help, volunteering with a morticians group taking DNA samples to help identify the dead.

Working in disaster response, she began to meet amazing survivors and fellow volunteers, and to see a whole other side of nursing, she said.

Her work in Haiti continues to show her more.

"I remember now why I went into nursing," she says. "It's easy to get caught up in technology and protocol and forget the human element of nursing."

Cossman has since gone to help with housing cleanup after a twister hit Joplin, Mo. She serves as a member of the Illinois Medical Emergency Rescue Team and the Medical Reserve Corps.

She also volunteers with Remote Area Medical, a Tennessee organization that sponsored her first mission to Haiti and provides free medical, dental and eye care in the U.S.

"We all have a responsibility to do our part to heal the world," she says. "There's just so much to be done."

This story appeared in print on Jan. 22.