Numero Uno

Having a blast with our awesome patients!

Today was the first day working with patients!! It was fantastic.  Being the first day on site, we expected things to be absolutely crazy, but it turned out that everything worked out very smoothly as things always seem to do when God’s in charge and people are prayin :-)  We (students) all split up and worked in pairs with the PT’s & OT’s.  We got to help with evaluations, treatments, and fitting of all sorts of adaptive equipment such as wheelchairs, canes, and crutches.  Some fittings literally took hours and most involved some sort of wrench, duck tape, Velcro, or WD-40, but the patients were so appreciative and the kids extra cute :-)  They really appreciated anything we could give them…even having to fit pink AFO’s to a little boy…he was just happy to have one’s that fit again :-)  We are learning so much from the licensed PT’s & OT’s and they are so willing to teach us all sorts of things in this unique experience.  We as students also got to spearhead & lead a new section of these PT projects called integrative health.  We each gave short informational health blurbs to the patients waiting in line and rotated throughout the day.  The topics were low back pain, osteoarthritis, and birth to 1^st year development and were all ended with a biblical tie-in by someone from the church.  They were very appreciative, asked many questions, and seemed very pleased and happy with what we had to say in English.  Having a translator while treating has been a unique experience that has helped us to really hone in on what we really want to ask and do with the patients since we only have a limited amount of time with them and there is often so much going on.  Nora and Missy even got to take on their own patients the first day when things got a little busy and did a fantastic job!

Later in the afternoon, we had a special visit from the new CEO of Medical Ministry International (MMI).   We were very encouraged and excited to hear his vision for expansion of projects all over the world, especially his goals for expanding Physical Therapy projects!  It’s so exciting to see our field of study expanding around the world to help those in need! He was very personal and passionate about all he is doing and a real pleasure to meet.

By the end of the day so much had gone on we forgot to call the bus to come get us, soooooo we decided to make a dash for the playground and have a lil photoshoot.  Here is a lil preview :-)


Sooooo it took us like 2 hours to upload this blog....so we did this lil shin dig (below)..and it worked :-)