My first cool patient story...

Things have been going very well - I think getting here right before the new year was great because I had a few "holiday" days to transition in more slowly... this Wednesday I started seeing some patients with Nick (PT, my boss) and Emily (OT) and our dayworker Jeremy.  I got to practice putting on a cast with a baby with Nick doing most of the work and instructing what to do as he went along, and then Friday I got to cast Jeremy's leg, cut it off of him and off the cast on myself...

Casting Jeremy's leg

Nick and Emily casting the other leg

Cutting the cast off my leg

Cool story about how God works - one patient was down for a long time b/c he had a back surgery to improve the 'pouch' on his back due to spina bifida.  He had a cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak that would not heal up afterwards (a bad thing...basically he couldn't sit up or stand up without fluid kinda draining away from his brain), so he had to lie in bed.  Then he developed meningitis and was really sick - they didn't know if he was going to make it.  I met him Thursday for the first time, his mother stays with him as well.  (Most children have a caregiver with them - usually there's a mattress under the patient's bed that the caregiver sleeps on, but because the wards are relatively empty right now, I believe mama has her own bed.  But when Emily explained (partially in French and partially with the aid of a translator) that I would be helping care for her son from here on out, she gave me a big hug.  We stood with him a little to work on his standing balance - after a while his knees get tired and look like they'll give out from weakness of being bedridden so long.

On Friday, I got to help him walk (short distances 4x with 2 of us holding onto a gait belt, a hemi walker, and a chair following behind) with Emily for the first time in a month or more - and it turns out that the body's reaction to the meningitis was what jump started the healing process to actually allow the CSF leak to close up.  Sometimes our bodies need to actually be able to respond to a bad stimulus to improve healing (think Prolo therapy for those medical people out there...)  How cool is that!?  Just goes to show how awesome God is in allowing bad things to work out for good.  :)  Yay God!



This weekend I got to go out to a restaurant on Friday night with some live music by crowding into a taxi (actually it wasn't that bad, it was 10 people in a small minivan of sorts, did a tiny bit of dancing, ate some baraccuda (it was quite tasty!).  Since Conakry is a port city, obviously there is a lot of fish!!  In fact, on Saturday, I got to walk through the fish market again (there were about 8 of us...which was a little more obvious than the 2 of us last time I went), but there's just something awesome about seeing people making these large wooden boats by hand, mending nets by hand in long rows...  I have to say it's pretty neat to see.  There is a lot of fish for sale obviously, too - snapper, some kind of large stingray type fish, and tons more that I don't know (dorado?  I think I heard that mentioned.)  There are of course many smells to accompany these fish lying on dirty tarps, concrete or just plain 'ole dirt.

Notice the pigs in the trash in the bottom right...

Down on the dock after walking through the fish market

Mending nets by hand

I did laundry for the first time this weekend as well - 1st load and I already lost a sock.  Sadness ;)  It is a little funny to carry laundry through the ship - I live 3 decks away from the laundry...and I'm still learning which staircases do what, so I end up skirting through the hospital wards briefly.  The VVF (vasovaginal fistula) ladies are doing their hallway dance down and back with singing.  (Walking is good for them, so since dancing and singing is much easier to convince them to do, that's what happens instead ;) )  Most of these ladies have had a childbirth that they have been unable to recover from (I won't go into too many details because you know how much I dislike this subject ;) ) and most become outcasts in their area due to the inability to hold in bodily fluids, so this is their chance at a new start.  At the end of their time there is a 'dress ceremony' where the ladies are given a new dress to celebrate the start to a new life.  Pretty cool - I hope to attend a dress ceremony.  :)

Sunday I went to a local church, got to do a little dancing up front - think conga line...  :)  Still learning my way around town (of course, the part here by the port is tiny in comparison to the rest of the city, but I think it would be hard to get to via walking...)

Sunset from Deck 7