Onto another Chapter

After much thought I decided that it’s time to step away from my coach in Chicago and find a local coach. It was a really tough decision because I have had a lot of success under my current coach. However, there is only so much a coach can do from afar and I need to get myself established here in Portland. It is scary to leave what you are used. One thing that I remind myself is that there is more than one way to train successfully. I have had success under all of my coaches: Coach Sloan, Coach Diemer, and Coach Leach. Each coach has their own strengths and with each coach I feel like I have gleaned knowledge and skills that have made me a better athlete and person. I received this note from my Coach: “I have thoroughly enjoyed having you in my coaching life for the past several years and will treasure memories of you personally and your commitment to running and to excellence in everything that you do. I will always welcome any opportunity to provide support for you - please reach out at any time. Best Wishes as you continue to move forward - please keep me posted on your continuing journey.” When I received this email my eyes teared up. It’s always sad when a chapter ends even if you know the next chapter is good as well.

Sorry for the long blogging hiatus! I am going to revamp this blog as I train for my first international competition: The Osaka Marathon!

Visit to Kalamazoo

After a fun weekend in Northern Michigan I visited my grandparents in Kalamazoo. They were great hosts as always and it was great to catch up over some great Cappuccino Shakes made by my grandpa! I spent the night with them and the next day we went to Panera for breakfast before I caught my train back to Chicago

life line - call a friend : )

Today was a very busy day for prosthetics. First of all I needed to make the TLSO for the patient with the unstable fracture. I was informed that we were out of plaster bandages, so it took awhile to find the supplies. Once we had the supplies we went and casted the patient for the brace in the ER- you need more than one to do this type of cast. It all went well but because of his injury and lack of supplies we couldn't do a bivalve casting technique (casting the front and then the back so you have two pieces that fit together). We had to do a clamshell casting for the tlso (leave a portion on the side open). This isn't a problem- it just takes a bit of art to sculpt the missing side. Good thing I enjoy an art project every now and then. : ) I did take some measurements so that I would know the circumferences. After this, FIVE prosthetics patients came up. One of the patients was a little girl who was having pain on the bottom of her residual limb. I took a look and even a small touch to the end was painful. It looked like her tibia had grown alittle and she had no distal padding on the end. The problem was that her limb was only 3 inches from the knee. I talked with Sidgu and we brainstormed everything we could. I kind of thought that she might need revision surgery so I went down to get the ortho surgeon. He took a look and said that he would do what I thought he should do but hadn't ever operated on a kid. He said let him know if he should operate....this put me in a cold sweat. If she had a longer residual limb i would think no problem but its so short as it is. Well...I decided this was a time to use the life line "call a friend:)" I went on the roof and called Todd at Shriners Childrens Hospital. He was super helpful and after discussing the situation we decided revision surgery was really the best option. I hope it goes well.
Next a casted 2 ladies for above knee prosthetics. There was another lady who wanted a prosthetic but she was really swollen so we gave her a shrinker and told her to come back.

Well sorry- that was alot of detailed prosthetic info....but I guess that was what was on my mind at the end of today. The good news is that - guess what, I have learned quite a bit the last couple years in school! : )

prosthetics in Haiti

Today was my first day in the Prosthetics Lab. It's on the roof and it's a legitimate lab- much better than many places in the US. Sedju. Emanuel, and Miguel are the three guys that work up there. They are really fun. They speak some English but alot of the time I am not sure exactly what is going on. Miguel is the captain of the amputee soccer team. They are pretty awesome- look up utubes of Medishare amputee soccer. I did alot of prosthetics today so I will just share some fun stories from the day. First, an engineer was down here a week ago who is designing an inexpensive prosthetic foot that can be manufactured with plastic in Haiti. Good idea...however...right now Ossur is one of the labs sponsors so all the people have 800 dollar or more carbon fiber feet (like the flex foot). Anyway, so while the engineer was here they switched out all the amputee soccer players feet to the plastic low cost foot. Oh side note- they don't where there prosthetics when they play soccer actually (they use forearm crutches). Anyway, so today the whole team was in the clinic making a bunch of commotion. I asked what was going on and they told me that the soccer players were saying that they couldn't walk with the other foot and they wanted their old feet back. I told him to tell them that they were athletes so they should be able to walk on anything (said as a joke). It was really funny. There was even more commotion as they tried to tell me that they could but still wanted there feet back. Anyway- so we switched their feet back to the dynamic response carbon fiber feet. Story two, one of the guys came back after lunch with a watermelon and gave me a big chunk. We stepped out of the lab to the back "porch" and as I ate.I started to spit the seeds out (there was a small gab between the fence and the hospital wall. All of a sudden I heard yelling and Sedju started laughing. I went to the edge of the porch and looked over and there was a whole line of people crammed between the wall and the fence taking a break from work- oops!! Story 3, I was cutting a cast off after I had filled it with plaster and let it harden and one of the techs came up to me and said "Do you like to cook?" I said "yes!" Then he said "really? Well cut it like you are killing a chicken!" I was confused- he just meant to use more strength but the analogy didn't work since I hadn't ever killed a chicken! ; ) Another excitement was getting called into the OR because of a spinal fracture. Casting the patient in the OR for an unstable burst fracture of L3 made me alittle nervous...now I need to make a brace for the guy to keep it stable until they get someone down here to operate which could be a few WEEKS! Well, more from me tomorrow.

Day 4: being a PT for a day

Today I helped out with the PT. I did some exercises with a kid with low tone and some exercises with a hydrocephalus child. It was pretty self explanatory. You scan the patient logs and look for "PT." When you see that you look for the corresponding bed number and then assess the situation. For example the child with hydrocephalus needed to work on protraction and she had knee contractures. After peds, we went to ortho. One lady who had bilateral femoral fractures needed PT. We got her up and walking. Next we went to the spinal cord unit. This is where I spent most of my day. I learned how to do transfers- hard physical work. I got all the spinal cord patients into their wheel chairs. I played catch, talked and played connect four with some of the patients. It was good to get their spirits up. After that I got put to work organizing donations. We got all the suplies sorted and to the right department. I am excited to do prosthetics tomorrow. No prosthetics is done on Sunday (today). It was neat to see the pastor come and give a church service to the patients. It was a tough day. The problem is that there is no place to get away- except the roof which I learned this morning that we really aren't supposed to go so now I am alittle scared. It was nice to look down at the streets but also scary to see police standing by the gates with huge guns. So now I still go to the roof but I must sit between the generators just in case someone were to look up from the street and be unhapppy to see a "blanc" (white). It's pretty chaotic and everyone wants to chat in Creole if you are by a patient- It's good practice but it gets tiring. To be quiet honest- I'm already ready to go home. It might be a long week. I shouldn't speak yet though- I haven't done Prosthetics yet which is what I am trained to do. It's just tough to be on such a little complex in a "lock down" situation (no leaving), people screaming in pain...and for me- I can't do anything for someone in the ER. I crave solitude..a nice run to clear my head...it's going to be awhile until I get that.

Day 3 Haiti

(pardon typos- this key board is really sticky and no spell check :) We woke up at 5:45 and had some coffee and bread on the beach and then we were off to run. It was market day so there was alot to see- goats handing upside down on the back of a truck, all sorts of fruits. The run was fun but long and I don't think I was used to the heat. Good time though. Jeff and I showered quickly and then went down to the coartyard for breakfast (included). We had omelets, bread, and grapefruit juice. They also brought a glass of creme for the coffee which Jeff took a gulp off and said " hmm this must be goat milk or something." When I told him it was the creme we had a good laugh. We hurried to check out and grabbed a motto to take us to the glas station we were meeting Teresa at (doctor that used to work at Cloud Forest Clinic with Jeff and now works in Christianville). She had to check on some of the orphan kids in the orphanage so we went there. We then met someone she had a talk to about supplies for a project (busy lady!). We then went to Teresas home and had lunch with her, her husband, and her two little kiddos. Her home was clean and orgaanized and quiet- it was nice to have a little break from the chaos outside. After a quick stop for lunch she drove us down to medishare right before Jeff's shift started at 3PM. I met the Rehab director and he showed me the Prosthetics Lab. It's run by all Haitians but he said they speak good english. I had some dinner that was provided and then went to the roof to watch the hussle and bussle in the streets and watch the injured get carried in. This is going to be an intense week.