Barefoot Doctors

The Weather is getting hot over here. It is in the 90’s and there is no Air conditioning where we teach. We tried moving to the new dorm building but it was not much better. The new dorm has smaller classroom, lower ceiling, and less ventilation so within minutes it was stuffy. Add people closer together and 90 + degrees heat and it is pretty uncomfortable. The heat is one reason we came a few weeks earlier this year and the weather has not been bad until the last couple of weeks. Once air-conditioning is installed it will be much better.

Despite the heat, things are going very well. This week I have had a chance to teach them some basic physical rehabilitation techniques. In these pictures you can see how we used bamboo to challenge their balance and then show how just a little assistance can help. The main point for rehab for the majority of disabled children and stroke victims is to help them help themselves.

The patients should be encouraged to do as much as they can on their own before they get assistance. We also when over ROM, Back Pain, and function. It turns out 16 of the 24 students have disable children in their villages so how to help rehab a CP child for example can make a lifelong improvement to the child and their family.

We also found out at least half of the students ride a motorcycle on a fairly regular basis either

as a driver or a passenger. Motorcycles are the most widely used mode of mechanical transportation. Often there is no road but you can get around by motorcycle. Even here in Thailand there are more motorcycles than cars. However, most people here do not wear helmets! One of our translators, Abraham, has had three motorcycle crashes when he hit is head but fortunately he was wearing his helmet. So to dramatically demonstrate our point we got two small watermelons from the cooking staff and put little faces on them. Then we put one of the melon heads in a motorcycle helmet and dropped it from about chest height.

The watermelon was unharmed. Then we took the melon head and dropped it from the same height without the helmet. The results were tragic for melon head as you can see from this picture. The moral of the story was you should always wear your helmet to save your life or prevent serious brain injury.