Fridays break my heart

The physio clinic at Kijabe hospital has a pretty scheduled routine: Mondays and Thursdays are back pain patients, Tuesdays are plastic surgery patients (skins grafts and tendon repairs, etc), and Fridays are pediatric days. All of the days are full of their own upsides and downsides but I found out that Fridays will be the hardest by far. Peds days are when the mothers bring in their children whom have developmental delay of some sort, such as cerebral palsy. This week one patient particularly had an impact on me. The session started when the toddler peed through his pants and thin cloth diaper all over me but honestly that didn’t bother me that much or stop my treatment because all I could think about was that this 3 year old boy was being seen by a doctor for the first time since birth even though he was not able to lay on his stomach, crawl, put any weight on his feet while being held, or even communicate a single sound. 

At first it was hard for me not to be frustrated with his mother for waiting so long to bring him into the hospital but I’m guessing that the majority of the reason she waited so long to bring him was because of lack of funds. Even though Kijabe is a mission hospital the services still are not free and can be too expensive for many patients to afford.  (Believe me, If I could treat every patient for free I would). I don’t think this child will be able to come back to the hospital again for this reason so I only had 20-30 minutes to do exercises with him and to teach his mom what to do so that he can progress through the necessary developmental milestones. Now remember that I don't know any Swahili and his mom doesn’t speak any English so the treatment session was a little less than ideal to say the least. For a normal peds PT session in the US you would have toys in the clinic to distract them while doing exercises but they don’t have any at Kijabe so the boy just cried and cried.  Thankfully at the end of the session I was able to grab a physio who was seeing patients in the ward and I asked him to translate for me so the mom could know what to do with her child at home. At the end of the session his mom left to go pay and I got to soothe and cuddle this precious kiddo and right then and there my heart just broke. This child had undiagnosed CP and nothing was going to be done about it. It is very hard to see kids that have any level of developmental delay or disability in the US but it is even harder to see them in a country where there aren't government programs that provide therapy for these kids. It really makes me think about how many kids there are in third world countries that are mentally and/or physically handicapped and they do not get the care or support they need or deserve. I could go on and on but let’s just say that Fridays break my heart because there are lots of other stories like this 3 year old boy. I will need extra prayer that I can help these precious kiddos and that I will be able to effectively teach their mothers how to help their kids.

Okay I really hate to end on a low note so I want to share a REALLY funny story. Since my dad is doing ortho surgery here at the hospital he will frequently come into our physio room and talk to me about certain patients and etc. so on Thursday he got to meet the whole staff.  They all liked him (mainly because he made fun of me) which later got the staff started on asking me questions about the rest of my family and if I was married. (Here in Kenya it’s very important for women to be married so I frequently get asked by Kenyans if I am.) Then they started asking me if I would marry “outside my tribe” because tribes are of great importance here and a lot of people wouldn't consider marrying outside their tribe. I was explaining that in the US there are a lot of marriages between different “tribes” or races. They asked if I would consider this and I said that I would. They seemed confused by my answer so they asked me several times to clarify. (A lot of times questions/answers have to be repeated because English is not their first language and also they have such a thick accent that it’s hard for me to understand them. Thankfully they are very patient with me!) Then they asked me if we did arranged marriages in the US and I said no and proceeded to say that my dad would not choose whom I would marry but that he would have to approve of the guy. Then they went off on this string of questions which was more than they had asked me all week combined “What is your spiritual life like?” (spiritual life is of great emphasis here) “Are you a good cook?” etc. You have to realize that the whole time during this conversation I was so excited because they were communicating with me way more than they had before and we were starting to be friends! What I didn’t realize was that I walked straight into a brick wall of marriage proposals. Since that conversation I’ve had two informal marriage proposals. One older woman physio keeps telling me that she is going to talk to my dad about me marrying her son and then another young guy physio constantly tells me he is going to talk to my dad himself about marriage. I wish I could say that both of these physios are joking, and at first I thought they were, but they’re really not. Throughout the workday they keep asking me where my dad is and when they can talk to them. So it looks like I’m going to change my mind on the Fort Collins PT job and instead take a permanent job as a physio at Kijabe and be a wife for one of these two great Kenyan men.

Haha, just kidding...I’m just really hoping that when I kindly decline their offers that they won’t hate me because I really do want to be able to work well with them and the rest of the physios on staff and I don't want any drama getting in the way!