Hola!

It's been a pretty busy few days in the DR. On Tuesday I was able to travel to el Circada, a very small remote town in the mountains to the west of San Juan, about a 45 min drive. Since all of our travel is down in the beds of trucks, it made for a great sight seeing experience. Jill, Heather, and I went to this clinic with our professor, Brenda, who is a Pediatric specialist. This clinic has a local therapist who travels there to screen children for developmental delays. Some who came there were coming in for a check up while others were attending for this first time, often being sent across the hall after seeing a Doctor because of concerns about their walking, crawling, etc. I believe this program had been started by a Bradley grad who turned a project into a reality, which is phenomenal. Most of the kids were under 2 and were absolutely adorable. I continued my streak of being the one to bring the baby to tears. It was awesome seeing Brenda work her magic with these children - words weren't needed to get them to do things. One of the saddest stories I've come across was a child who apparently has seizures and has weakness and spasticity in one half of his body. His arm would curl up and he would push it back down to straighten it out. I think he probably has grown up thinking that was normal for him (since maybe 3 years old) when it definitely could have been made better with proper therapy. He was very cheerful, as were most of the patients I've worked with outside of crying babies.

Wednesday was my last day at the regular clinic. We had 3 PT students plus two PTs and 2 undergrad students so Kelly and I tag teamed a lot of our patients, bouncing ideas off each other. We were able to treat a few strokes and a girl with scoliosis. There was also a man who had a somewhat unknown surgery on his knee several months ago, which has resulted in very minimal movement of the knee. For that patient Kelly and I just mobilized the knee and knee cap (basically just moved it back and forth) in every way we know how and it resulted in the man saying he felt way better in his ability  to move it, which made us feel good even though we couldn't see a lot of difference. The two stroke patients were probably my favorite because we were able to work closely with the therapist, telling him what our opinions were and showing him treatments. One of the men was unable to raise his arm 

above his head before we started but could get most of his motion after using a technique called PNF. This was phenomenal because we had never seen PNF work before, at least so quickly win such impressive results. We really felt like we were able to help both of these men and their families.

We did have one mishap, however. Someone at the clinic stole my phone while we were working with these men. Not so much bummed about the phone, more so that it happened while we were helping the patients. Life goes on, though, and a phone is great but it isn't the end of the world. Franklin, the therapist we were mostly working with, went into the community looking for it and asked around, even took me to the police station. He and the rest of the staff there were amazing and tried everything they could. I felt bad because they felt like they let me down by letting it happen. By no means are all of the Dominicans great people, but the ones involved with the clinic and our other experience were so welcoming and helpful.

Today, Kelly, Jill and I went away from physical therapy and went towards physical labor. We volunteered to help build a retaining wall around a future health center that will be the largest on this half of the country. In order to get emergency care here you must travel to the capital, which can take well over an hour. Even to get an ambulance is a matter of politics since the drivers are basically taxi drivers. Simply put, if you have an emergency here you die. The new facility is being run on donations and the sale of shirts and hats etc. and is getting closer to the $3 million mark that is estimated to complete it. The wall we've been working on is massive and will be used to stop people, obviously, but it's primary focus is to prevent hurricanes from damaging the new facility, which is what happened to the facility here. It's going to be a massive asset to this community and the country.

So I've gotten a little sun burnt and several more mosquito bites. I was going to brag about neither happening but I wasn't so lucky. We have had perfect weather so far even though the forecast called for rain every day - so hoping this continues into the weekend as we travel to Santo Domingo and the beach! The goal is to find a good machete or something else that's awesome at the market there. No more mangos though, that stuff will be in my teeth for days.

Probably have one more post from me this weekend before we head out Sunday. It definitely won't be nearly this long. If anyone is actually reading this until the end besides my mom, you must be supremely bored.

Hasta luego