September 16th to 23rd

So sorry for the late post!

I’ve not been feeling like myself this past week but thankfully its no Haitian sensation :) I've just been sleeping more than 15hours a day and have also been having some (occasionally funny) balance issues and some (not so funny) pain in my inner ear. I had it checked out at the clinic yesterday and the doctor suspects that its a virus that’s been making me sleep so much  (which I’ll just have to wait out) and some sneaky microbes from the shower water that got into my ear which I’ve got drops for. 

On that note, we’ve finally got our septic tank and pipes fixed after almost 3 days without showers, sinks and toilets in the staff house. Yay!

This week has been really busy in the clinic so its been pretty tough going trying to keep my energy up but all that training with Nonu and David last week has really paid off and they’ve been doing most of the tech work for the 3 ladies with above knee amputations we have staying with us this week. We also had a little boy come in on Tuesday morning with clubfoot which our visiting prosthetist managed to cast. His foot was pretty easy to correct statically so I took over the modifications for his AFO and got a shiny new brace to him that afternoon :) .... he spent the rest of the afternoon playing soccer outside with Stevensya who is another one of our patients.

She’s 3 and has a congenital below knee amputation which is really long so cosmesis and componentry are pretty hard to get right but we managed pretty well and had her up and walking with a supracondular socket by day 2.

We’ve also had 2 physios in the clinic all week that came as part of one of the teams. It was nice to have them as a couple of the ladies were really struggling with lower back pain and strength issues so they got loads of attention and exercise!

On Saturday I went to the orphanage again from about 10:30 till 6:30, I spoke to Madame Lucien about taking Kelly (the little boy with what we think might be Arthrogryposis or possibly another congenital deformity) with me to the clinic for a couple days so that we can make him a ‘prosthoses’ which will correct his wrist and give him a thumb so he can hold onto things a bit better and be more independent. Thankfully she agreed so I’ll be picking him up first thing tomorrow morning and bringing him back on Saturday which will give me plenty of time to spoil him and feed him heaps of healthy food :)

I also met a couple from Kitchener who are staying for a month and are taking off a year long sabbatical after this all around central and south America then onto NZ. Andrew is a paramedic and Eimear is a nurse so I’ve been seeing a fair bit of them :) it’s nice to have some more fellow Canadians join us!