Day 4: Clinic Day and the Stories that Come from It
Today was the big day.
Well, tomorrow is Surgery Day, so that might technically be a bigger day for the doctors (and for us, who will have to test our ability to witness some blood). But today, was Clinic Day, in which the orthopedic team took up residence in a little wing of the hospital and saw kids who more often than not travel from other islands to have their uneven limbs, club feet, and a whole lot more looked at by seasoned specialists.
The doctors just got here last night and, to us, who have been here a whole three days more, they seem fresh and positive and ready to go. Don’t get me wrong, we’re posi as posi can be, but after a few long days of super hot sun and a lot of traveling around the island, we’re a little wilted. Their energy is motivating, though, and they have been like a juicy rum drink to the brain.
It’s possible we’ve had actual juicy rum drinks right now. Long day, like I said, and the only WiFi is at the bar.
Anyway, Clinic Day is like 100 stories in one room. All of those posts we’ve been doing about meeting kids and their families (here’s one and here’s the other), imagine that condensed into one shockingly small space. It was stories galore—where to even start?
I’ll start at the end and work backwards. Tonight, Dr. Mark Miller, Dr. Aaron Huser, Donna Griffin, Physical Therapist, and DeWayne Johnson, Surgical Technologist, gave us their impressions of the day versus previous years. Some of the patients they worked with are repeat patients, who come back every year for this orthopedic mission for follow-ups, some with previous surgeries in St. Louis under their belt. Dr. Huser is new to this team, but the rest of them have been here at least once before.
I ask them what their impression is of this year versus last year. Dr. Miller, who’s kind of the head honcho, says that even with prior experience, he was still overwhelmed walking into a place with 400 people in the waiting room. They saw 96 kids today, and nothing surprised him, per se, in that he didn’t get some wild diagnosis that he’d never seen before, but it was clear again to him that these children who have so fewer resources than we do also seem so much stronger.
We saw that ourselves, walking around the waiting room today and noticing how patient and…whatever the opposite of whiny is…these children of all ages were. And they waited for hours, despite the super efficient system that Jackie King, who works on the ground here for World Pediatric, administrates.
An aside about Jackie, there was a toddler who started to lose it a little bit, and Jackie just said “This is not your mother’s house!” in a determined way, and the kid stopped in his tracks, while the parents erupted into laughter. “The moment I spoke to her, I felt like I’d known her my whole life and everything was going to be all right.” said Raynebo, a mom who I connected with so much today that we are already friends on Facebook and maybe for life.
Raynebo’s 12-month-old daughter, Raynique, was being held by her husband, Rickey. The trio is from St. Kitts, and they’ve literally searched the world for someone to help their daughter, who has club feet, some neurological disorders, and is blind. I didn’t realize her clear, brown eyes couldn’t see, as they focused on me so distinctly while I was talking to her. But when she was fussy and her daddy started to sing to her, she immediately stopped dead, listening and smiling. I remarked upon it, and they were like, “Well, yeah she can’t see.” Whoops. The next time she was fussy I tried the song I sing to my son every night, and she laughed at me in what I hope was a happy manner, not a mocking one (I am a writer, dang it, not a professional vocalist!). I told my son himself this story later tonight, and he was stunned into silence. Turns out our song can stretch 2,000 miles!
Raynebo and Rickey have been to England to try and get some answers from opthalmologists and neurologists, but now they’re focusing on Raynique’s feet. They got great news from Dr. Miller, who explained to me later that she’d be one of the first surgeries tomorrow, so that they could have the rest of the week to help her with therapy. I said “Well, that’s good news, right?” to Raynebo. She said, “It’s not good. It’s great.” Their relief was visible. The couple has two more children, and Raynebo experienced some serious depression after she found out her youngest had so many issues. The therapy they recommended to her made her feel even worse, because of the “questions they asked,” she says. I remember those days, when they ask you things like “Do you think about ending it all?” and you’re like “What is the right answer here?” while you picture straitjackets. I asked her if they prescribed her anything for postpartum depression and she said that that’s why they’re on the whole healthier than we are—they don’t take so much medicine. Point Raynebo!
Kataria was another sweetheart, a 1-year-old with one leg so short, her femur couldn’t possibly be lengthened. As Dr. Miller says, “I can lengthen a femur, but I can’t double it, and certainly not triple at, as they would need.” Her parents had met Simon Carey, WPP’s developer on the ground here, at the Barbados airport, where her mother works. They were desperate for a solution for their daughter, who otherwise is “her way or the highway,” as her mother puts it. She’s mentally sound but physically they can see she’s going to need serious help. Dr. Miller’s plan for them is to see how the femur grows in the next year, then talk next year about turning Kataria’s ankle into her knee (by flipping it around, for real!) and then attaching a prosthetic.
Sounds bizarre, but as Dr. Huser tells me, the best part is seeing these kids with congenital defects adapt. Their attitude is very “Stop bothering me, I’m scooting around just fine because I’m trying to PLAY.” They don’t complain, they don’t know any different, they compensate beautifully. I’ve heard that they are also the fastest to adapt to physical therapy—the obstacle being “This is getting in between me and the thing I want to go explore, so I shall figure out how to walk ASAP.”
We met a lot more today and took so many great pictures, but we’ll see tomorrow how the results start happening, with a really special VIP allowance to observe the new OR in action.
