Hands and Feet

October 19, 2011

Today was day two of going out with the medical teams and the day was quite eventful. You must excuse my choppy writing style for this entry, I made a lot of brief notes while I was administrating throughout the day and I am now re-typing what was written and my creativity is as belated as the night.

Apparently this location began as Indian grounds many years ago, and now is grounds for a local school in a impoverished farming community, dirt roads and all. the kids here love bubbles, insanely, like they've never seen the things before. Which wouldn't surprise me given that even their soap doesn't have suds.

The soccer ball the kids were kicking around in the approx. 40x20 foot cement yard between the classrooms was so worn down it was an oval shaped, gray stringed knot. The kids here only have school for four hours a day and most kids that are 14 or 15 are only in 4th or 5th grade.

It rained mist, not droplets.

To get straight into the interesting stuff, there were two boys here today that had a painful amount of fleas in their hands and feet. Truly, even one flea would be painful, as demonstrated by the young girl who screamed and cried as the doctors removed a single flea from the tip of her finger. But these boys had about forty in each foot, and probably twenty in each hand. 

The first boy was a tiny figure of a kid; very malnourished indeed. Skin and bones; skinny skin and thin-thin bones. He seemed to not even have enough energy to shake his head "no" when I went up to him as he sat his body hanging on the bench and post to ask if he'd like to see the doctors.

After being picked up and carried over by one of the women working for the health department, the boy was examined by the doctors and soon drew the attention of everyone in the self-set up clinic.

They ended up giving the 3 foot child some Valium to calm him down and hopefully quiet the screams that alarmed all the students within a 20 foot radius of the building. As he was screaming from the pain of the flea removal, I selfishly just didn't want him to look me in the eye; then the connection would be drawn and I would forever be seared into his memory tagged as one of the most painful days of his life.

It caught me as a surprise that the people we helped yesterday at a clinic a couple miles down the road acted as if was the absolute best day of their year. Free medical care and medication, whew, this was more exciting than the world cup for the lot of them! Well, maybe not the world cup.

The kids yesterday had been drawing pictures and giving them to the doctors, smiling and playing as the adults laughed and waiting hours upon hours for a few short minutes with the doctors. We served 119 that day, and today we would only serve 98 (hindsight). There were people being prayed over, one man prophesied over a doctor, and another woman gifted handmade place-mats to one of the eight doctors. Laughs, chit-chats, gifts and appreciation.

Today, screams and sobs of terror and pain.

Fortunately for the boy, "no" is the same in both English and Portuguese, unfortunately that exclamation was not enough to make the procedure slow down. Who knew such a big noise could come from such a small child for so long.

The second boy with an extreme case of flea infestation in his body was actually brother to the first. When he had gotten word out on the playground-area that his brother was the source of the screams and he was to examined next, he hid. That boy ran and hid swiftly, as I believe I would have done at his age. Some guy ended up finding him and bringing him in, face swollen with fear and tears welling up in anticipation as he drug his feet on his way into the back room.

That boy was weeping a song of painful fears as his foot was raised onto the lap of the doctor for examination.

The way the doctors have to remove the fleas is by using the scalpel to slice open the skin over the parasitic flea, pulling out the little beast and then digging out the egg sack that it laid and burrowed deeper into the foot or hand of these children--leaving a deep hole and blood flowing in its place.

The older brother, also very small for his age and clearly malnourished, was mumbling sobs, abs clinched. Moaning, weeping and sobbing, the boy held still for the completion of his first foot.

The doctors gave him some Valium, too, and let it take it's course as they took a quick lunch break. The boy sat there with his feet hanging in his chair, not long enough to touch the floor. One foot done and wrapped, the other resting before it's turn on the doctor's lap.

Note that our hands and feet, espcially the tips of our fingers and toes are some of the most sensitive parts of our entire bodies apart from our lips, which has the most nerve endings in our bodies.

Well, the valume must have worn off because the second boy is no longer weeping sobs of pain and fear, rather he is shouting sobs of anguish and remorse, integrating Portuguese phrases and exclamations.

This child has been here for hours, some of which had overlapped with his brothers procedure, and he ended up screaming his way through the exhaustion. All contemplation of weeping through the pain and "taking it like man" went out the window for this round.

The boy ended up throwing his head back over the lap of the woman who was holding him down from getting away or from kicking or hitting the doctors and his vision struck my eyes. That was it. His sight targeted me and I was made. With a clinched brow and a sorry excuse for sympathy smeared across my face, I repeated all I knew to tell him: "It's going to be okay." My mom had phrased such encouragement to me as a child through my worst moments, and I was hoping a cracked smile might do him some good.

Many of the issues treated over the three days we went out to provide medical care into the Brazilian community are easily preventable with education and good hygiene. These fleas, although common in this community showed neglect  and parental abuse from the home of these two boys.

Apparently the mom came to pick her kids up with the grandma, but once she got word that the doctors had treated her children for their bodily flea infestation, she was too embarrassed to claim her children. Once the grandmother came in to fetch her grandchildren she claimed that she would be taking care of the boys instead of their mother from now on.

We can only hope they receive better care, but we know that what was done for them today is for their best interest and greater good.