Ummmmm......
Ummmmm......the boxes have not arrived. Dr. Wakefield refers to Peru as the land of Manana. People are never in a rush. No one ever seems let down or disappointed. They simply pray for the best. There is no actual reasonable explanation, from the stories I am told. We simply needed longer; needed the boxes here earlier so that we could accommodate all of the new rules that apparently no one knew.
Al, Mani and Dr. Mary left early this morning to go try to see what wonders they could work, trying to resolve the customs issue. Clearly, it was to no avail. Apparently, Peru has been recieving so many donations for non-profits that they needed to change some of their intake requirements. As many of you know, dissemination of these kinds of materials and information is many times less than efficient.
The rest of us travelled to the hospital with the intent to make the best of it. Steve and Taber set straight to work making pads for some of our BK (patients people missing their legs below the knee)
I was very excited when Roberto Carpio returned to our clinic. We had fit Roberto with an arm prosthesis last year. At the time Roberto did not feel he wanted a leg prosthesis, nor did we have the extra supplies to attempt it with him. Roberto is missing his right arm below the elbow and above the knee on the same side. until we fit him with an arm prosthesis, Roberto had to squeeze a crutch into his armpit in order to ambulate. The prosthesis and Roberto's limb both seemed in excellent condition. We did a few maintenance adjustments to his prosthesis and further assessed his leg for a prothesis.
Using one prosthesis is tough enough. Making successful use of one and taking on another is quite a challenge, and I welcome and am excited to help Roberto take it on. I honestly feel that he could easily get down to 1 crutch with ease....we'll see. ;-)
After Roberto, we did a follow up with Rosa. I had mentioned Rosa earlier in the blog.
We fit her last year and she has done really really well. Today, Rosa prepared lunch for our team. The best Ceviche I have had was part of this lunch. Muy deliciosos!!!
After lunch and Al, Mani and Mary's sad return we evaluated a few new patients and called it a day. 2 patients stood out as remarkable...but I have a hard time calling them patients, for in the end we really felt that we could do no better for them than they were already doing.
The 1st patient, Juan, was missing both arms above the elbow as well as his Right leg above the knee from the explosion of a land mine.. You can see him with Al in the picture. His prosthesis was made many years ago. There is no knee joint. It does not bend. Juan spends a lot of time standing. He walks and moves remarkably well.
Having no arms, Juan's wife puts his prosthesis on every day. After that, Juan is nearly independent. Anything Al or I would try to do for Juan at this point would feel like a hinderance. We took some picture and notes of his upper extremities, trying to make a plan for what we might be able to plan for Juan for next year. My greatest hope is that we can provide him ONE arm prosthesis that he finds beneficial.
In a remarkable way, Juan does not find his amputations to be a disability. Through the translator Juan commented that he is grateful the the Lord spared him. In his own way, Juan was commenting that The Lord must not be done with him yet. He felt that there was much work to be down...and further that his amputations were going to help and enable him to be even more successful.
In the end we took some pictures and measurements so that we could plan and prepare for seeing Roberto next year; hoping at a minimum to fit Juan with at least one arm prosthesis.
The next fellow was Hector. A delightful 6 yr old boy that was born without arms. There is nothing we can do for Hector. He will most likely never be our patient. There is nothing the we could provide Hector that would make everything seem alright. Hector, like many kids his age, like to play soccer.
Mis amigo, my head s really dropping. I'll nee to finish this