Day Four
Patients moved in and out of the wards today, recipients of 21 surgeries in total, participating in physical therapy, hobbling up and down hallways and staircases with walkers and crutches with the help of physical therapists, and then being discharged and cleared to return home with their new hip, knee, or repaired trauma case. Patients who were split open on the operating table the day prior were walking and ready to go home. It is incredible what the human body can withstand and how quickly it begins to heal. One physical therapist said to me that these people were doing things today that some patients back home wouldn’t be ready to do for another month, and they were doing it with much less pain medication. And they did it with much wider smiles than one might expect.
Our new friends are always smiling. I hardly believe it when some patients tell us that they have “un poco dolor,” a little pain, which may be true compared to the excruciating circumstances that some of them lived in before, but is pain that keeps most patients in bed for much longer than 12 hours. And other than their little pain, they tell us that they are perfectly fine and so grateful. Even after I helped move a woman on her bed and it had clearly been a painful experience, she smiled at me and said, “Gracias, gracias.” A man whose surgery I observed waved to me and smiled every time he saw me today, and our little 12 year old friend smiled at me every time I came in to say hi. They know how to be happy despite hardship.
I met a man today who had taken a fall from a high location on a construction site, who hadn’t been able to move his shoulder well and without pain for a long time. His surgery was yesterday, and today he was able to put his hand all the way up and lean on it against the wall. He said it hurt just a little, but he used it with apparent ease. As he put his outstretched hand on the wall above his head, something that most people can do easily and don’t think twice about, his wife told us that he hadn’t been able to do that before. Imagine the liberation he must feel to be able to move his shoulder again.
If there is one thing I have learned from our new friends, it is that we as God’s children are capable of more than we expect ourselves to be through Him. The human body we have been given can bounce back much more quickly than I would have anticipated from surgery, and the people can be happy and grateful, and they can smile and be friendly despite their uncomfortable circumstances. They look for the positive, for the changes that they will see soon in their life because of their operations, for the kind faces who smile and ask them how they are doing, and they focus on it. It is because of Him that we can have everlasting joy. He is the light that shines in the darkness, that the darkness cannot comprehend. No matter how dark the circumstance, as long as we invite his light into our lives, the light will always drown the darkness, and we will heal.
Maya Holmes
Team Blogger
