Therapy Dream Team

A few weeks ago (right before getting my second bout of Typhoid) I had the wonderful opportunity of having a “Therapy Dream Team” at the Miriam Center. For the first time in my 7 years of working at the Miriam Center we had a Speech Therapist, Physical Therapist, and Occupational Therapist at the Miriam Center at the same time.  It was pretty FANTASTIC to say the least!

Molly Welsch is a Speech Therapist (ST) I met during my travel working stint in Philadelphia. She is an AMAZING ST who has a heart and passion for working with children but also has a lot of experience with feeding/aspiration. She came to Haiti for 2.5 months to help set up a ST program and help in developing/training in better feeding/nutrition.

Jennifer Clause is a seasoned pediatric Physical Therapist with a wealth of knowledge. She has been to the Miriam Center on 2 previous occasions but was always there when I was in the states. 2 years back she completed Physical Therapy Evaluations on 15-20 of the children that have been helpful in guiding my treatment of the children. To say the least I was excited to finally meet her in person and get the opportunity to learn

What a huge blessing to work alongside both of these amazing women and to pick their brains for ideas and treatments for the children. One thing I learned quickly years back when I started working at the Miriam Center is that I wore many hats…I played the role of ST, PT, behavioral specialist, feeding specialist, hand therapist, etc. because we did not have one. Me doing something was better than nothing even if it wasn’t the ideal.

Jennifer collected supplies from my wish-list and I was so superduper excited when I found out that she collected enough small therapy ball that I will be able to provide one to each of my outreach families for in their homes. This will be a huge blessing to encourage carryover of the therapy throughout the week outside of their 1 day a week.  My hope is to do more training on the specific ways they can use the therapy ball with their child prior to providing them with one in their home.

Jennifer also collected old AFO’s that children in the states had outgrown. Throughout the week we were able to fit various children with AFO’s to increase stability at their feet/ankles needed for standing and walking.

One of the projects I was in the middle of working on was creating knee blocks for many of the severe/profound Miriam Home and Outreach children to provide the stability needed to work on standing and weight-bearing through the arms. Both important for increasing strength and proper bone development.

Many of the Severe and Profound Children at the Miriam Center really require 2 people (4 sets of hands) to provide good quality therapy that works on what they need to work on. It was so wonderful to work together with Jennifer and see so many of the children working in positions and on skills I was never able to work on with them because I didn’t have enough hands. It brought so much joy to my heart knowing the potential and the future. I have 2 OT students coming this summer which means more hands and equals more intense and better quality therapy for the severe and profound.

As I was praying over how to best utilize the time I had Jennifer in Haiti, I really felt picking her brain for ideas to make some new therapy training handouts was a beneficial way. The need for handouts that addressed more individualized areas was brought to me last fall by Presidue (the Haitian that runs my outreach program). I had been wanting to make some new handouts and had started to scan some pictures into the computer but really wanted a PT perspective and ideas specifically for crawling, standing, walking, etc. Throughout the week Jennifer and I brainstormed categories (activities to promote extension, activities to promote flexion, activities to increase core-strength, activities to promote rotation, activities to encourage hand use, etc.).  After all the categories were made we began locating pictures that demonstrated each activities. For activities we could not find a picture for we had her husband take pictures of us doing the activity with one of the children. We then wrote a brief caption to go along with each picture. I then took all that information and made it pretty through the program “Publisher”. Once I had an English version of the handouts I had Nahum translate them into Creole. While I am back in the states regaining my strength I am typing in the Creole and getting the handouts printed, laminated, and 3 hole punched ready to go back into Haiti and start training!!! In total we created 13 new Handouts.

The week went by so fast and unfortunately I started getting sick Jennifers last 2 days in Haiti. I am so thankful for the time I had to do Therapy with this “Dream Team” hopefully God will align for us all to be in Haiti at the same time again to do it again!