Sweet babies and little braces

This last week, I've spent a large amount of time in our pediatric clinic. It's a difficult situation because we don't currently have a trained pediatrician or anyone with more than basic pediatric training. So, by default, we as foreigners are given the task of diagnoses. Which, being that we aren't doctors, we aren't really trained to handle, but we do the best we can given our knowledge base.

We had a patient come in who has something called arthrogryposis, a rare musculoskeletal disorder. The baby was born with contractures of most of her joints (meaning they are stuck in one position), and limited ability to move at all. She's now 10 months old and progressively improving although way behind normal development. Working with Donna, our pediatric OT, I made the little girl a pavlik brace from scratch to try and improve the positioning of her hips and some hand orthoses to try and stretch out her wrist contractures.

It's been fun working with a patients again and this sweet little baby is the most relaxed, easygoing child I've ever met. She is just as happy as can be and hardly ever cries or screams. Even when I'm tying her up in various contraptions. Her parents are obviously very devoted as well, and while the outcome isn't terribly bright, we're all hoping for the best.

It's hard to see how difficult disability is in developing nations. Most of our patience can hardly afford to come to our clinic despite the fact that COPE pays for transportation, food, and accommodation for the patient and a caregiver. They can't afford to be away from work and often only make it to the clinic once, never to return for follow-up.

We did our best to convince these parents that they needed to return in 2 months to check the progress of their little girl.