Counting crutches and blessings

 

From Nancy Young

Twenty-five years ago, in January, I had a cyst removed from the base of my spine. I was 18, a college freshman.

The cyst was bigger than expected so I was in the hospital for six days instead of one, most of them spent bored silly with a woman in her 60s who liked to watch bowling and who continually warned me of the dangers of “adhesions” forming around my scar.

They would haunt me forever, she said. I appreciated that she meant well, but I couldn’t wait to get away from her.

After winter break, I went back to school, learning how to sit precariously on the edge of my thigh in the hard wooden chairs of the psych and English classes I was taking. The alternative was following my mother’s suggestion and taking one of those donut seat cushions with me to class – which was, of course, a horrifying image to my teenage mind.

Twenty-five years later, every once in a while, it still hurts. Just a little ache, a reminder of this relatively minor surgery – and a reminder how the body doesn’t quite ever forget anything you do to it.

On Monday, I went to a crutch-packing “party” at the Physicians for Peace (www.physiciansforpeace.org) warehouse in Norfolk. They were getting ready to send the first shipment of 1000 pairs of donated crutches to go to Haiti for amputees or other people with limb injuries.

Gail Grisetti, a physical therapist from ODU, was there and she was in Haiti just recently, volunteering with a group organized by Operation Smile, Physicians for Peace and ODU.

Gail was at a hospital in Hinche, in the central plateau, maybe 70 miles from Port-au-Prince. The patients there, many of them with amputations and broken bones, had been lying in bed for three weeks or more. This, in itself, made them among the luckier of the earthquake victims, because they’re in a clean, safe place.

But some still needed casts for their broken bones. Gail said there was one little girl with both legs broken, sitting straight up in bed, dressed perfectly, hair done up, a big smile for passersby, patiently waiting for her casts. She and her family never complained.

In fact, the trick for Gail was how to convince Haitians, who are completely devoted to their kids and family, that sometimes the best way to help the injured is to have them move their own damaged limbs, to use their own strength.

So you not only have had people who were lying in bed, but whose family members had been moving, lovingly, every muscle for them.

But, most of us know by now that one of the best things for recovery is to move around when you can.

If you’ve got a broken leg, if you’ve got a missing leg, moving around is hard to do without support, without crutches.

And there aren’t enough crutches in Haiti right now – Gail said they asked a local carpenter in Hinche to make some, which I love because that gives him a paying job, which there also aren’t enough of in Haiti (and never have been. Even before the earthquake more than 2/3 of the people lacked a formal job.)

But they still need more and that’s where this first shipment of crutches – donated by lots of good people here in Hampton Roads and elsewhere – is headed.

Gail said the amputees are in that bridge period between when they have lost the limb and when their bodies can handle a prosthesis – which are also being sent by Physicians for Peace.

The amputees need exercise, they need rehab, so they can get around in the beautiful, but very tough mountainous terrain of Haiti. It’s ground that’s still moving by the way – on Monday and Tuesday there were 4.7 magnitude earthquakes near Port-au-Prince.

It’s a long hilly road and they’re just at the start. I think of this girl who was in the hospital in Cange, in the days after the earthquake (photo thanks to Dr. Lisbet Hansen of Virginia Beach) and who lost her foot.

I really wish the worst thing she had to face was a bowling fanatic for a hospital roommate and a little discomfort while getting to go to college.

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