Saturday, April 7, 2012

A serious post.

Just wanted to give an update on what we are up to.
Annie has a patient (44 year old man with a stroke) that she sees 2 nights a week. We ran into Dr Kolesnyk a few weeks ago while out walking to the bazaar. He mentioned that he could really use Annie's help because he had a young patient who had suffered a pretty severe stroke.
Annie has been working with this man for about 3 weeks. His wife is a pediatrician and his daughter is a medical student at the University. His daughter speaks English well, so she has been Annie's translator during the treatment sessions. This man has made good progress in his expressive speech and has regained some movement in his right arm since Annie first saw him. His family is very involved in his care and they make sure he completes the exercises and homework Annie gives him each week.
During the first session, this man's daughter asked Annie at the end of the session what they owed her for the evaluation and treatment. Annie was able to explain to them that it was free. She was able to tell them that God had sent her and her family to Ukraine to be a blessing to the people there. I know 'blessing' may be an odd word to use, but it seems to describe what we want to do here well.

bless·ing

[bles-ing] Show IPA
noun
1.
the act or words of a person who blesses.
2.
a special favor, mercy, or benefit: the blessings of liberty.
3.
a favor or gift bestowed by God, thereby bringing happiness.
4.
the invoking of God's favor upon a person
 
They were definitely surprised by this- which was pretty cool. Annie has really enjoyed getting to know this family.
This weekend she will be making a universal cuff for this man to, hopefully, enable him to do more things with his right arm independently (like eating):

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