Progress at the hospital

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Hello

I am writing progress in the loosest sense of the words - it´s more a case of the ups and downs really. For example yesterday (Thursday) I had a really good morning. I had quite a long chat with one of the psychologist interns, Jamil, and he told me he´d like to learn English too, along with another intern.

Jamil is a Christian and believes that God has it in mind for him to go abroad some time. He has been asking God how that can be possible with all the difficulties of getting passports and visas here as well as the fact that he doesn´t speak English. He believes that my helping him with English would be a help on that path.

I couldn´t help thinking that it would be a shame for him to go abroad, as he is so good with the children, helping them through their fears, sadness, guilt (where other children were involved in the accident) and he would be a massive loss. But as far as I can work out, he´s not paid at the hospital, he does it out of kindness, so I guess that can´t last forever (he does other jobs to keep up with the bills). But who knows what God has in store for him! We start Monday.

Yesterday morning was excellent. While the children were having their physio, I went more thoroughly through the cupboards, rebuilding jigsaws to reallocate the right pieces to the right puzzles, and seeing what else was there, so I can use the money you have all sent me in the best possible way, rather than duplicating what´s there - not that there´s much. I found a ´pairs´game with Winnie the Pooh characters doing different things. It was just brilliant. After physio was over and we were all bored of colouring and drawing, we got the game out. What started as three of us playing ended up 8 of us, and the kids absolutely loved it, especially Nelly and Gladys, whom I always want to stretch as they are bright and eager.

Elvia (I call her ´Boo´because she is exactly like the little baby in Monsters Inc - always walking around, tiny pigtails and constantly talking unintelligibly) played too, but didn´t really get the concept of taking turns, but the nurse and I were teaching her this important etiquette!

That took a goodly part of the morning, and then I introduced Nelly and Gladys to the learning numbers book I´d bought. It´s the perfect level for Nelly and perhaps a tad easy for Gladys, but even Gladys gets some things wrong in there. We´re learning how to write numbers, who to write numbers in words (Gladys only) and colouring in the right number of objects according to the number on that page. I think this book was my best purchase. The girls call it "el libro de las tareas" - the homework book, and believe it not, they WANT to be set lots of ´tareas´!

I had a nice lunch with my family, and even got half an hour to sit and listen to my i'pod. I was really tired after a bad night´s sleep (storm making the 2 billion dogs in the neighbourhood crazy), so it was nice to chill. I started planning in my mind the lesson with the doctor and nurse for that evening, then back to work! Iain was gonna try and call me but the number for the family home I gave him didn´t work, but he sent me a text so I knew what was up. Lunch time for me, early evening for him is the best time for us to talk.

I went back to the hospital really looking forward to it after such a good morning. You can guess what happened - it was SO tough! At first the kids were being very clingy, which was nice as I got lots of cuddles, and I like that because I don´t cuddle them, never quite sure where they are sore and where they´re ok. Boo was in a really fidgety and grizzly mood and kept trying to escape. I can barely understand her, but the gist was that her granny had been to visit and now she wanted to go home. Nelly was good about stopping her escape through a door the nurses left open, but this made Elvia really cross.

The others seemed restless too. Nelly had a headache and others were crying incessantly. It´s perverse that visiting hour (12-1pm) upsets them so, but one hour isn´t enough and means that both the time is too short for those that get visits, and others don´t get visits because their parents live far away and the journey is too much in time and cost for just an hour with their child. By 5pm Nelly was crying, Boo was going crazy, it was just awful.

We did some painting and Gladys, who was the only one doing ok, painted a beautiful scene which everyone admired and I stuck to her wall for her to keep. Boo got paint everywhere and got me really quite frustrated (Boo tips paint on table, Liz tries to remove paint from Boo, Boo screams, Liz gives up then later gets the paint away, Boo gets another pot, opens it (remarkably dextrous for her age!) and tips it out on herself - etc).

Eventually we cleaned up and got out some jigsaws. Nelly was really tearful and I couldn´t get her to eat her tea. In the end she went to bed, still with a headache. I asked her if she wanted me to tell the doctor about her head, but she didn´t. With the heat, smells and screaming, it´s not hard to get a headache there, poor little dot.

I left around 6 feeling exhausted and frustrated. I knew it was typical to get a fall after the ´high´of the morning, but was feeling really fed up. For the first time ever a bus passed me by when I flagged it and that was enough to get me feeling really sorry for myself. I took the next one and got home to my family, which was actually very soothing.

Mama Maritza decided we had to get to the bottom of the right code for Iain to call and phoned various family/acquaintances in the US to find out what they dialled. A 4 was missing from my number, the code for Cochabamba. We called Iain briefly from their phone and he called me back. Cokes was at our house too, so I spoke to him too. It was just the tonic I needed.

I dragged myself back to the hospital for the English lesson with Dr Romero and Magda, really shattered by now. But the lesson ended up being good fun. We went back over letters, spelling and greetings and then did numbers. I had them reading mean big numbers like 21,438,839 and it was good fun. They seem to thoroughly enjoy the lessons, though I feel bad as the book they have is fairly poor and keeps annoying me by even being wrong! Still, if they come out of the lessons with enough to get by, it´ll be a start!

They drove me home as always after the lesson, around 10.15pm or so. I was glad we weren´t so late as Weds, as it´s not fair on my family, though generally Carolina is still up studying hard - normally into the small hours. The doctor and Maritza had a quick chat - she was secretary to the hospital 15 years ago and recognised him immediately when he dropped me off. He recognised her too, though it had been so long - it was kinda nice. I´m invited to go out with a load of them on Friday night for live music and dancing for the doc´s birthday. My first night out, and even my first drop of alcohol not counting the slosh of rum in my Coca Cola for Granny birthday the other day. Should be nice!

This morning (Friday) has been good too. I focused a lot on more educational activities for all. Colouring for Cristal, puzzles for Eleuterio and Jaime, flash cards for adding and subtracting for Nelly. Gladys has been very quiet and didn´t want to do anything all morning. She was smily enough with me, but seems to want her peace and quiet (among the screams of Alex), so I let her be.

They had tied up Cristal to her bed posts. They do that a lot with most of the littluns and those in the worst pain. It´s very distressing to see them like that, but they just don´t have the staff to ensure they stay in their cots/beds. I know Cristal enough to know that this was not necessary and she wanted to do colouring. So I asked the nurse if I may untie her. The nurse in the morning, unlike Magda, can be a bit brusque, I´m certainly very careful with her. She said I could untie her, but it was my responsibility if she feel. Gulp. I took the risk because Cristal is a sweet and tranquil little girl and sensible enough to stick to the rules. I left one of the ties on her leg on, but looser and untied the arms so she could sit up and colour. It was a small but satisfying triumph, improving her morning for her.

Boo went home today. I wasn´t surprised as she´s pretty ok now, and was quite a handful because she was so much better. Shame I didn´t get a photo of her before she went, she was impossibly cute!

I can smell lots of food smells here in this internet café and it´s time for lunch. Hasta la próxima!

Liz
xx

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Comments

[Andy]

A Carribean cruise for 8 weeks would've been so boring in comparison
Hey, sounds like you're having a truly memorable trip, for a variety of reasons! Must be tough at times but also v. rewarding. Hope you continue to enjoy the trip - I'll have a look and see what you've been up to from time to time, so keep writing!x