November 11, 2009

Lest we Forget.
I woke up this morning feeling fine, if not extremely itchy! Caryn was bitten by something that caused quite the reaction on her face through the night and she is swollen, I am thankful to have avoided that on both trips! I had to wear wet pants today because things didn’t quite dry. Luckily, in this heat, it doesn’t stay wet for long once you are walking around. Jasmin came with us in the boat this morning because he has a very long walk to school, and it would’ve taken him much longer with his foot cut. It is funny because he has sort of become our little brother with us all looking out for him. We also gave him some new sandals but could not find a matching pair, so he had come up to see if the other shoe was at the orphanage…it wasn’t…it’s in PaP. When we got up to the orphanage today we found Team Ireland working away and met Tony the PT in the office going over the files. We gave him the lowdown and he pretty much followed us around all day because we knew the ropes and the kids. We would ask the therapist who they wanted us to see next, go over the file and then go through their whole program and do whatever needed to be done. It was a good system and we accomplished everything we wanted to, so that tomorrow could just be tidying up loose ends and reviewing the programs. We had Enrico up in the stander and Stevenson wanted another AFO for his R ankle, so I figured that we could easily make a mold if I could find some casting material. I searched through the pharmacy and was able to come up with the casting wrap stuff that is activated by water, gauze to protect the skin, tongue depressors for me to cut along and some scissors. We moved Enrico into the bath tub room incase it made a mess, took pictures and stood him etc. Then most of the people left the room to get something and I started wrapping the gauze around his ankle with his foot resting on my knee…when I got down to doing the figure 8 around the ankle he moved a little awkwardly so I looked up at his face- to see the biggest pout ever! He had his lip thrust out and a look of fear in his eyes. I was trying to find out what was wrong and explaining what we were doing but he starts to cry, tears are streaming down his face and then he is sobbing. So, I am definitely not going to put the little guy through torture, especially if I am not even sure if P+O will be able to use the mold. So I gave him a big hug and told him we wouldn’t do it, and he calmed down. I guess he had a traumatizing experience to get the first one done! I love that little guy! We also did some work with Jean and Daniel just to see how they are doing developmentally, unfortunately I left my chart in PaP. We made up programs for Junior, Robert, Gondelson, Peterson, Watson, Enrico, Tada and the babies.
On our way back to the hotel we had the boat take a little detour to Island of the Lovers or something like that, which is basically a sand bar in the middle of the ocean. We swam there and found really cool starfish and then went back to the hotel for supper of beef and rice and vegetables with chocolate cake for dessert.
The Ireland team had invited us over to their hotel but nobody wanted to walk that far in the dark, so Caryn, Debi and I watched Slumdog Millionaire in our room- I really liked it! Even though it kept skipping because the dvd was extremely scratched up.