After breakfast half of the group began the trip to perform home visits and the other half of the group boarded a boat to travel to Livingston for clinic. I was in the Livingston group with Kim and 5 students. This village is one that is less often visited by volunteers and has an interesting mix of Spanish and Rastafarian cultures. We are treating in a school that was created by local mothers of children with special needs. They had a problem and found their own solution. They hired a physiotherapist who was still in school and he has been working in the clinic the past 2 years treating the students as well as locals of various ages in the afternoon. SUPT thrive has worked along side him and educated him trip after trip to help long after we leave.
Today the school was closed due to a holiday for a local Saint. However we were still able to treat 8 patients between the two groups. With 4 1st year students and 1 2nd year student, the strongest kills they had were in the arms and luckily today we had 4 patients with arm elbow or wrist pain. This population allowed the students to jump right in and use skills to treat. I was impressed with the willingness of the students to answer questions and think outside of the box.
My favorite part of the morning was being able to spend over an hour performing an evaluation on a patient having the students clinically reason the possible diagnosis and treat. Having a slower load that first day allowed for us to really work on the foundational ideas taught in class and carry them over the this environment.
Lunch was right down the street where the leader of the clinics family owns a restaurant.
The biggest change we saw today was in a middle aged lady with a regression in progress after a wrist fracture and cast removal. She was doing well for 2 weeks and then began to get worse this past week during PT care. We worked well to address her impairments and change her symptoms dramatically with manual therapy, educations, and exercise modifications. She went from 8/10 pain and 20 degrees of wrist flexion to 3/10 pain with 60 degrees of wrist flexion and no fear!
After the boat ride back from clinic we had a few minutes to jump in the Gulf of Honduras before our reflection time, dinner, and church service.
Somewhere between that time I got to catch up with Olivia and talk about our lives and prepare for life together in a month and a half. It is great having such a supportive partner for these adventures and our goals for this type of work in the future!
Sitting by the ocean and looking up at the clear sky and huge stars reminds me why I love these cultures and people. The appreciation for life, work, each other, and the environment is overflowing in these areas of the world!
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