Well today was an incredible day. We followed pretty much the same morning routine as the other days. Then we headed over to the Hope Haven wheelchair factory (we had Clay and Jonathon as our translators). Our job for the day was to fit some children with new wheelchairs. We had three kids to do so we broke into groups: Fio and Carissa worked with a boy named Lester who had severe cerebral palsy, Olivia and Rachel worked with a little gal named Maria-Celeste, then me and Alicia worked with a gal named Teresa and her mother Ethel. Teresa, is fifteen years old and has never had a wheelchair in her whole life. Her mother has taken a lot of care for her, and has always had to carry her wherever they would go, which has resulted in recent years her not being able to do much or get out much. I did not pry into the home life, but it has just been Ethel and Teresa for awhile. When we got there she had pretty much already been fitted for a wheelchair, there were just a couple of modifications that would help in her comfort and we got them taken care of quickly. I spent about 15-20 minutes just talking to her and trying to let her get comfortable with me. She had a stroke a couple years ago which has left her right side a little bit spastic so I worked on calming down that spasticity and loosening up her hand and wrist. Our goal was to start teaching her how to move the wheels a little bit, and then help Ethel on any other care needs she had. Teresa’s condition is bad enough that she will probably never be able to wheel herself around, but even the ability to maneuver the chair a little bit and look around can be a huge improvement for the kids. We worked on that for about ten minutes, giving Ethel instructions on how to help Teresa develop the ability to perform the task. From talking with Ethel she described that she has to lift Teresa to do everything and at times her back gets really sore, so consulting with Alicia we decided to help teach a stand-pivot transfer. So we instructed/demonstrated to Ethel the proper set-up and body mechanics. Following the preliminary instruction we showed Ethel how a proper transfer with Teresa. That was a lot of hard work with all of the spasticity that she has, but finally we were successful. We then gave Ethel the opportunity to perform the transfer and she now has a new technique that hopefully will help the two of them out going forward. It was an incredible experience something as simple as a wheelchair and some basic techniques totally changed their lives. Ethel was so incredibly grateful and broke down to tears a couple times when she thanked us, and Teresa was so happy.
Probably the hardest part (yet most growing) of the whole trip occurred following working with Teresa and Ethel. There was a lady that had been waiting all day to have a consultation with one of us, and since the other guys were still finishing up, it fell on my shoulders to visit with her. Her name is Flora, seven years ago she was in a car accident which left her paralyzed, and she also has a left femoral amputation, she also does not have usage of her left arm. She did physiotherapy for four years, and has not been able to regain any usage of her left arm; however she has done a good job keeping the ROM up and has not developed any contractures. She wanted to know if therapy or some sort of surgery would be able to help restore function in that arm. After the assessment it was evident that she likely had a peripheral nerve injury and that function was not going to be able to be restored. So for the first time in my young PT career I had to deliver the devastating news that nothing more could be done. This is a hard enough thing when you have command of the language, but I think was even more difficult where it had to go through a translator. She broke down a bit and I just tried to encourage her to not give up hope.
We finished at Hope Haven around 1300, and headed for lunch. Following lunch we had been tasked with going to purchase more shoes. We had about $800 from donations and such that we had brought down, so we headed to the street market. With Jonathon and Clay translating we were able to do some wheeling and dealing and ended up getting around eighty pair of shoes that would be distributed up at Santa Maria de Jesus.
Tonight we had an awesome dinner. We all went out to eat at a restaurant called La Pena. It was an awesome dinner, I had the mixed plate which had carne assada, grilled chicken, sausage, refried beans, guacamole, and some sauces. I also had a strawberry smoothie drink…which was the only non-alcoholic beverage on the table. We had a really good time and just relaxed and enjoyed hanging out with each other. Clay and Omar accompanied us to dinner. It was also Alicia’s birthday today, and Chris’ and Jonathon’s birthday so we celebrated with them. There was this really cool traditional band playing.
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