A Rolling End to Week 1 (And Beyond…)

As a physiotherapist, I’m in the moving business.  I help enable people to be as mobile as they possibly can.  Being able to get around on our own gives us  independence and makes us feel good.  This job is often challenging when working with individuals with spinal cord injuries, but in an environment with limited resources this challenge is even greater.  Try to imagine being bed bound for four weeks.  You’d probably go a little stir crazy.  Now imagine having been in bed for over four months.  This was the reality of some of the patients we returned to last week.

For some of our patients, the need to stay in bed was called for.  Some had severe pressure/bed sores and others had uncertain spinal stability.  But another factor that had kept most of these patients in bed so long had been the unavailablility of wheelchairs to get up into.  Here in Haiti, the access to resources needed time and coordination between various aid organization, but in the end, all worked out.

On Team 3′s watch,  a shipment of manual wheelchairs and cushions was delivered for each patient.  The mobilization process commenced!  And I am happy to say that the good work that Team 3 started has now been completed by Tess and myself.

Every patient has had the opportunity to sit up in, and propel, a wheelchair, including the sole tetraplegic on site.  The looks on the patients’ faces were priceless.  First they thought i was crazy to make them try to go from lying to sitting at the edge of the bed on their own.  There was the initial uncertainty of sitting up at the edge of the bed, the fear of participating in the transfer to the wheelchair, and the beaming smiles and laughter that met the encouraging shout outs once they had accomplished their task and moved beyond their beds for the first time in months.

Getting our tetraplegic patient up was especially sweet.  He took to the chair like a duck to water.  Sure he needed someone to prop him up from behind, and another person to support his legs in front, but he placed his hands on the rims and started to push like he’d done it all before.

The ability to move around under our own volition, whether that be walking (with or without a device) or using a  wheelchair etc., is part of what gives us all a sense of independence, accomplishment, and happiness.  Even if we able bodied people tend to take it all for granted.  For our patients here in Cap Haitien, the wait for mobility was certainly long.  This was accomplished by the collaborative efforts of the staff of HHA (past and present) and their partners, in Haiti and beyond.  But now, we need to work on outdoor mobility skills, and outfitting the tetraplegic patient with a proper chair that supports him and that he can push…  The process continues!

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