Janean

Bonswa!

Well, I started the day by slamming Heather's right thumb in the door. She already has a wrist brace on the left, so I felt really bad; she was a trooper though and didn't complain a bit. We had a busy outpatient morning (but not quite as bad as yesterday). Alex (the translator) and I went up to the storage room to get a walker and platform for a patient and someone locked us in! We had to call Emmanuel (the other translator) to come up and rescue us; everyone had a big laugh out of that one.

Judeline had a big day. Her walking is not nearly as difficult as it used to be; she is walking the distance from her room to the outpatient clinic without that much effort; stand by assist only. The big news is that she let Heather completely hold her hand, clear to the fingers, and she let her work her fingers and wrist a bit. Kirsten was massaging her forearm scar, while we put her left foot in a bucket of water to soak the huge chunks of dead skin off of it. Judeline and I were sharing ipod headphones and listening to Kirk Franklin while all this was going on. We told her this was true spa treatment - her hand and arm massage, foot soaking, and listening to music! Tomorrow, we are going to try to soak that hand in water; at first, she said no, but the ipod music is a good "carrot" and much more high tech and hip than stickers! :) We asked Donna to bring nail polish on Friday, so we'll see.

Please pray for Luc Pierre tonight. His leg is badly infected and the ortho surgeon is taking him to surgery tomorrow. If it is as bad as he thinks, he will have to amputate below the knee. He is not a young man, divorced, with two daughters. One of them is coming to be with him tonight.

Down the hall, I had a partial hip replacement patient yesterday. She was 92 years old, with dementia, and was toe touch weightbearing because the ortho doc found a crack in her femur after surgery. She was being discharged home on post op day three! Anyway, the head of her femur was in a jar in her room; not kidding. I guess they wanted to take it home and show the neighbors or something. Anyway, Heather and I had quite a time loading her into the small SUV with a walker, wheelchair, her abduction wedge and about 5 bags of clothing.

We had lots of interesting outpatients today; again, lots of crush injuries and fractures. Our clinic is quite a busy place, especially in the morning, until about 1 or 2pm, and then we'll go see our inpatients. We usually have several family members, and spectators, and some street children watching since our clinic is outside. We are next to the ER, so we see lots of people coming in after motorcycle or car accidents (no, in Port au Prince?). Heather asked one of the street boys why he wasn't in school today and he said he had a tooth ache. She found out that his father is dead, and his mom lives in the country, so he lives with his 19 year old cousin. Heather paid $5 for him to see a dentist, although he wouldn't do much treatment without the mom's permission. We were able to give him some tylenol.

We have decided to begin our day with prayer in our clinic and invite anyone who is there if they want to join. We have decided to end our day by sharing any water we have left with the inpatients. We just take the milk jugs of water and go room to room filling pt's cups until we run out. Great feeling to see their faces light up with a free cup of water.

Blessings to you all,

Janean