As a kid, I loved staying outside after dark playing with friends. In Indiana, I would sometimes stay out running full tilt amongst the neighborhood tracks, chasing make believe phantoms and hide-and-seek. In North Carolina, I played until I almost had to crawl home. Play. Outside. A concept sadly lost on most kids today in the U.S., where TV, Wii, Facebook and the danger of abduction or injury lawsuits barely let kids even see the sunset anymore, or exercise the heart.
Because of the weather, and the possibility of evacuating to another, higher and larger hospital if the rain continues and the river pours down into Coya, Guido and Dr. Shaw discussed abandoning the rest of the surgeries, about five of them, for fear that they wouldn’t get the proper rehabilitation in time. When Dr. Shaw went to the families to discuss the situation, the eyes of the parents grew wet. Shaw turned around and told the team all surgeries are on.
I watched a boy today walk for the first time in two years. He had been wheelchair bound since a bicycle accident made him a paraplegic. He has the slightest of sensation in his legs, but only a hint. Todd and Jennifer, prosthetic specialist and physical therapist fashioned a lower body articulated brace with counter lever action and custom fitting. With some help, he was able to stand straight up again and even walked a short distance almost on his own. In the coming months and years, that brace will grow with him and allow him to stand up and read a book, look out a window, motivate short distances-on his own.
Coca-Cola. That's what we called him since it was just about all he would say, and light up when he said it. He had spina bifida (incomplete closing of the vertabra over the spinal cord) and needed some hip work. He quickly became a team favorite with his repeated beverage of choice. I did almost get him to say Dr. Pepper, too.
Roosevelt, 14, was born with a congenial disorder that misshaped his lower legs to bow like rainbows –leaving them useless. Doctors Shaw, Vigeland, and Gallagher sawed and chiseled his tibias like chunks of shish kabob and rearranged them to form a straight leg, and used metal plates that looked like erector set pieces to drill them into the diced bones, giving him straight legs to perhaps one day run with. When his father saw him, he cried pure joy, so did Dr. Shaw.
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A little girl named Nicole came to the clinic and waited days for a corrective hip
operation she will now never have since she was discovered to have a possible heart murmur as well.Since the clinic doesn’t have the appropriate monitoring device to say for certain if she did, she and her mother now have to make the arduous day long journey back home, unfixed. Her mother was heartbroken.
This is such a hard place. We forget how bountiful we are in the states until you come here. There is a fierce beauty matched with a savage wretchedness. Yet, deep green hillsides drape around the region, providing amazing play opportunities for the healthy kids–and perhaps the ones recovering from their injuries.
When I left dinner tonight at 9pm, the courtyard was alive. Children played and yelled and laughed. Tag seemed to be the game of choice tonight.
The Quchuea word of the day is Ama whakaichoo– Don’t cry.
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