Swimming without a pool

(Written 4.30 pm Tuesday 10/01/2012)

I wasn’t going to write a blog post until I’d put up some photos, but I wanted to write about a funny story that just happened. I’m sitting here at my laptop drinking tea and eating a rusk, thankful for my dry clothes and electricity because just half an hour ago it was a different story!

Gogo with a teenager on her back

This afternoon Tracey saw a patient with Duchenne’s disease (a degenerative muscular disorder), a 13 year-old boy with the most gorgeous face and sweetest smile. We couldn’t figure out exactly what the patient was referred for; Tracey was just told “for therapy”. He was in a wheelchair and his hospital file said he cannot stand. At first we wondered whether he was needing a school assessment from OT for attending a “special school”, but we managed to work out in broken Zulu-English that he was already going to school and was there for physical rehabilitation. As this was an assessment for physiotherapy, I started doing some paperwork at my desk. Tracey proceeded to spend an hour treating the patient, managing surprisingly well to communicate with the boy and his grandmother in a few words of Zulu. As I was nearby, I started searching through the dictionary and translating sentences as she needed them in her session. For example “Can you get onto the bed by yourself?” and “He should help with the work around the house” etc. Although overwhelming at first, the session was going pretty well, and Tracey was managing to show the patient and his grandmother what he can do at home to try to keep his muscles as strong as possible. Then, she was just starting to encourage him to propel himself in his wheelchair at home (his grandmother had pushed him into the room), when the Grandmother tried to ask Tracey a question, which of course we did not understand. Thankfully one of the Zulu therapists had come into the room at that stage, and he was able to translate. The patient did not have his own wheelchair! The one he was using was from Outpatients at the hospital. Oh dear. Frustration! All this time Tracey hadn’t known what the patient really needed from the session, and now she found out that she could have had a very different focus to her treatment – issuing a wheelchair and training him to use it. After a few more questions to the patient that were translated by our colleague, we found out that the grandmother had been carrying this 13 year-old boy on her back!! Well, both Tracey and I felt strongly that we needed to get this boy a wheelchair before the day ended. It is just not acceptable for his poor grandmother to bear that weight, and really limiting for the boy to have to rely on others to carry him everywhere. This could not wait. 

Wheelchair hunt

It was half an hour until the end of our working day, but Tracey and I found out the procedure for issuing a wheelchair, and went off to the wheelchair storeroom to look for one. This is easier said than done. The wheelchair storeroom is an old garage that was piled about 1.5 meters high with wheelchairs, crutches, walking frames and buggies, many of them broken, in a complete jumble. It was very difficult to squeeze into the room, and almost impossible to find anything (the guy in charge was on leave). We needed to find a wheelchair that would at least vaguely fit the boy, but all we could see was really small ones for children, or large Gogo-sized chairs, many of them broken. I decided to climb up onto the plinth in between the pile of chairs and see what I could get. Climbing a wheelchair-mountain is quite a challenge! While I was climbing, it started to rain gently outside. After much searching, and carrying three wheelchairs outside, we finally found one that would work for the patient… but it didn’t have footrests! Time was marching on, so Tracey took the wheelchair back to the Therapy department through the rain while I climbed the wheelchair-mountain again to find footrests. After a while under a whole pile of child-sized wheelchairs I found 2 footrests - success! By this time it was pouring with rain and thunder was rumbling in the distance, so I tried to put the other wheelchairs away quickly. Not so easy. It’s kinda difficult to lift a wheelchair up onto a wheelchair-mountain alone. So I decided to run back to Therapy with the footrests so that the boy could go home. By the time I got back to Therapy it was raining hard and I was completely drenched, but victorious! Tracey and I stopped a passing nurse who helped us translate to tell the patient and grandmother (waiting under a shelter while it poured with rain) that he should come back in a few days so that we can teach him how to use his wheelchair. 

When it's stormy...

After we had finished, I felt quite pleased with myself because it seemed like we had finally really helped someone who wouldn’t have managed without us. Yay! Then we had to run back through the pouring rain to the wheelchair storeroom to put the wheelchairs away and lock up. Oh my goodness, it was crazy!!! The thunder was rumbling, there were flashes of lightening and it felt like we were about to be struck by a lightening bolt. We ran back through ankle-deep water, and I was giggling the whole way. When we got back to the therapy department, it was dark inside because there was no electricity in the hospital (don’t worry, there’s a generator for the wards etc). We stood outside the therapy department sheltering from the pouring rain and wondering when it was going to stop. Then, there was a MASSIVE crash of thunder and Tracey jumped towards me and buried her head in my shoulder. We decided to wait inside the dark therapy room until the storm calmed down a bit. It was hilarious, but also super scary. We Capetonians are not used to thunderstorms unless we are safely inside a warm house with a fire in the fireplace in Winter. Summer thunderstorms are something else altogether! Tracey and I ran home through the rain, not bothering about raincoats because we were soaked through already. Thankfully there was electricity at home, BUT we still don’t have internet or cell phone reception as I type this. Weird to be so disconnected from home. But now we’re watching Glee, and it’s fun. Yay for evenings when I don’t have to study! I can adjust to this :)

Tracey and I sheltering from the rain and lightening.