Monastary and regression: Campo Weekend

So today is Tuesday and clinic was AMAZING this morning. We saw a 6 y/o M with spastic diplegia CP who was just the cutest little guy ever and he had the most amazing dad. What was REALLY nice though was how interested and receptive the clinic workers were to learning our techniques and how much they wanted to learn how to help their patients. I should preface that this PT clinic what constitutes PT for most patients is modalities: heat, e-stim, ultrasound. They do do some other range of motion (ROM) but it is done so quickly that it doesn’t actually aid the patient in improving their ROM. Then we had a gentleman who was 22days post stroke, L CVA, and just completely flaccid on his R side. A lot of education for the family and for the clinic workers on strategies to aid this man. QUE WOW! (that is one of our favorite sayings out here J )

Then, this afternoon was a cultural afternoon where we took an hour plus bus ride up to the St. Mary of something-a benedictine monastary up in the mountains. We participated in their afternoon prayer service and spoke with one of the eight monks who gave us a little insight into their order; theirs is a contemplative rather than active monastary. It was lovely. Afterwards we went for a FABULOUS hike up the river to a waterfall. It was like a 40 minute hike each way with rock climbing in the river de los Padres. My otra Cis decided to nickname me Jane, as in Tarzan and Jane. I’m pretty darn good at getting over those rocks and climbing around. The name “monkey” was also tossed around which I’ve heard quite a few times before- thanks Mom J. The long arms and legs do come in handy. It was such an awesome hike. It’s an absolute shame that there is nothing in Chicago like it. (Yes Colleeno, I know CO is where it’s at!)

So then we got back late and had a cold dinner. Food here is AMAZING. I just love looking at my plate because its so colorful and delicious J. We, the Cis, then just chill and trade stories. One of the other Cis, Sean, she is from Washington and works peds and adult oncology associated with the University of Washington and she was telling us some of the cutting edge tests that her patients are doing for non-hodgkins lymphomas and other cancers. Like allotransfusions and autotransfusions with really good results. Of course she explained it in far more detail. We were on the topic of using umbilical stem cells, which also constitutes as an allotransfusion, and got onto that topic.



OOPS this was supposed to be a regression so you all could hear about my weekend in the campo. We were at Vaca Gorda—yes, that’s fat cow campo, a rural campo close to the Haitian border. I don’t even know where to start. It’s such an experience. I don’t know how to explain campo. We treated 70 plus patients at our 2 day clinic. I did three home visits. We stayed with families who were so generous to open their homes and who gave us their beds, literally they gave us their beds and they slept on couches or chairs or piled all into another bed. We treated patients with all kinds of problems and played with the kids in our families. Widala was the 8 year old girl in our family. She has two older siblings who have graduated from school and whose pictures are on the wall; they work in bigger cities. Our patients were a lot of overuse injuries from farm labor. One of the highlights was on the third day there, a bunch of us took a 30 minute hike to a river and rock jumped into a deep section. SO FUN. Yeah, I got a bit sunburned that day too. Spanish by the way is very hard to understand when the person speaking has no teeth. My own Spanish is doing alright though. Definitely can make myself understood-like everyone though, you have good days and bad, even good hours and bad hours. It’s all good though! We had mosquito nets but are still waging war with them. Some of the girls have these huge bites on their ankles so much that they have pitting edema, ah well more practice for use J. Thankfully my mosquito bites have just remained bites and no swelling. Alrighty, time to go. Hasta luego.