Hand Therapy Clinic making Splints

The past 2 days have been amazing working in the Hand Clinic with Ann (CHT who came in for 10 day mission trip). It is truly a blessing because I had 3 kids I had to make hand braces for before I left this summer & truthfully I was putting it off because it is beyond my comfort zone & was going to very challenging…FUN…but challenging & with limited resources & amount of splinting material I was afraid of messing up & wasting splinting material. So having Ann here has been truly a blessing.

So we went around to all my kids in the Miriam Home & I told her all the kids that I wanted to have hand braces…In total their were 8 kids & in total 14 different braces. So far we have splinted 5 kids & 10 braces. It has been so much fun & I think we both agree that so much more so with the 2 of us working together & bouncing ideas off of each other. Most of the kids it took 3 people…1 to hold the child, one to hold the hand open & the other to mold the splint. I learned a lot from working with Ann…Ann sketched out all the splints for the kids & got the splinting material ready. Ann said splinting for these children has been really challenging for her because at her clinic at home it is mostly adults & so it is much easier to splint, the splinting material is old so harder to mold, & at home you have pre-fab splints or patterns that work but these kids are each so unique that we had to start from scratch with each. We had a lot of fun being creative & on 4 splints today I even got to use DUCTAPE & loved it!!!!! I was in charge of the ductape piece of the splints. As many of you know I love ductape…it is a necessity for therapy in Haiti…I make wheelchairs out of it, I make bolsters out of it…. I have to say we made some of the coolest splints I have ever seen before today. It was so much fun!

So yesterday there was a child I met in our For Jonathan’s Sake (FSJ) in our high functioning group who was born with congenital amputation of all fingers & toes. We did not get to interact much with him but Stephanie (our special education teacher) had the idea of bringing him back in today so that we could try to make him a splint that could hold different writing utensils so that he could color, write, etc. So we called his mom & she brought him in today. We were amazing to find out as we worked with him that he not only can he hold a crayon but color within the lines, he could hold a pencil & his mom has taught him to write his vowels. He was able to do a stacking activity with small pieces, he could put on & off his shoes, & pretty much so anything we asked him to do, He was able to do with his little stubby fingers & his thumb. He is the happiest kid & very bright. In Haiti many children never get the opportunity to go to school & if you are a child with disabilities it is almost unheard of. It was so exciting to sit down & talk to his mom & tell her he does not need hand braces to help him, to tell her how bright her little boy is & how much potential he had (which she got a look of relief on her face). I was excited to see that his mom has been working with him & she has such a desire for him to learn & has taught him how to count to 11, obviously how to color, & has tried to give him as much as she could. It was so wonderful to tell her how sometime soon we will be able to give him an education through the Luke 2:52 school & to provide her with a little baggie of goodies to take home to continue to work with her son including a dry erase board of Alphabet & number to trace then space to practice, markers, crayons, coloring book, & a pencil. The mom was just so excited. I really felt that no we did not make him a hand brace but we gave him & his mom so much more :-)

I was really sad to see Anne go…she was an amazing hand therapist & I learned so much from her. In total we made 18 splints & got new straps for 3 of the kids that already had splints. We had so much fun taking on this challenge together…many moments of laughter over our use of ductape to make parts of splints & our creativity to make these splints. I have been checking the splints the last 2 days on the kids to make sure no pressure areas & so far so good. The challenge now comes on training my staff how to care for these splints, put them on, developing wearing schedules, & facilitating follow through. Please pray for this aspect.