Public Health Station

First day of work, woo! We packed our vans with all the supplies we needed for the day, and our group headed to San Antonio to the municipal building which was our site for the day. In years past we have never gone to this site, so we didn’t know what to expect –how many people, what types of diagnoses, if we would have children and adults, what equipment we would need…the list goes on. Darrel was our driver, and we had four translators: Giovanni, April, Daniel, and Gerardo. Darrel was a pastor in a church in Ohio and brought his ministry and family here to Guatemala. All four translators work together with Darrel at his organization. Almost all of the clients that we saw today are families that Darrel and his team see once a month. Because we had never been there before, it helped us build rapport quickly and become comfortable because Darrel and the translators knew each of the families well. Our team consists of five students and six therapists. We were able to spend a good amount of time with each client, maybe 30 or 45 minutes, which meant we could be thorough in helping them and addressing their concerns. Some of the diagnoses we saw were spina bifida, spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, trauma, encephalitis, herniated disks and stroke. The ages ranged from 1 year to 85. As a group we have so many stories from just one day of work, but we’ll share just a few of our favorite moments of the day.

One of my (aka Breanna) most memorable experiences of the day came with the first client I saw with Linda and Joan May. A young boy came in with his adoptive mother seeking help with speech. We tried to start with making him aware of his mouth and to move around his tongue. At first it seemed like quite a fail. We spoke too soon! As we sang to him and clapped our hands, his tongue started peeking out of his mouth and he smiled at his own success. Another minute passed and his tongue was moving all across of his lips! All of us were absolutely delighted; all he needed was some time to process what we had shown him. The gratitude and happiness of the boy and his mother was truly amazing and my joy was completed with a hug and kiss from each of them. What a blessed start to my day.

Today was filled with so many touching moments…I (Lindsey L) just want to tell them all. Before going into the municipal building we stood in a circle and held hands, and Joan said a prayer asking that God would be able to work through our hands today…definitely a great way to start our work. One of my favorite children to work with had a rare nerve condition, causing a lot of stiffness in his legs. He smiled the entire time we were working with him…he was just absolutely beaming. We did various exercises with him and the entire time he played with rainbow stackable rings…stacking them and unstacking them over and over again. I could talk about him all day but it’s late and we need sleep…buenos noches!

~ Breanna Lynch and Lindsey Logsdon, OT students