Happy 2012 to everyone!
Not sure where to start this week, but in a nutshell it's been one of the hardest, most challenging, upsetting, frustrating weeks of my life. I've been to the 3 projects this week that i'm involved in. The set up here is that there are lots of homes which we go in to and take some children out to our on-site daycentre the 2 we're allowed into are the girls home (girls older than 7) and the younger mixed home. All the children at these homes have a disability of some sort - from very mild to severe. The other project is RH which is the charity's purpose built house where some children live and go to local schools. Then here during the day we take some government children and also some community children, again all with mild to severe disabilities. I'm enjoying a steep learning curve in physio, being the only western physio i'm taking on a lot of children to work with, but really loving the challenge!
The week started (on boxing day) with a day at the girl's home. For me this was the toughest although on reflection (good CPD!) i feel i'm exactly where i need to be and i am being of some help. If anyone wants any info please email me or send me a message on facebook.
The second half of the week was spent at RH where i can almost behave like an english physio as there are less children and we have them for a bit longer. So the success we had on friday was discovering the potential of a little girl who managed to push herself up on her front and almost crawled!! Then after all the hard work she ate all her lunch and more! Normally at lunch time she sits with her head flopped forwards and when i first met her didn't think she had any head control, but after our little workout friday morning she held her head all all through lunch!! Definitely a highlight of my week!
For new year's eve myself and a couple of the other volunteers went into Bangkok for dinner at Cabbages and Condoms, which is quite a famous restaurant that supports family planning - the wish being that contraception can be as easily available as vegetables (i.e. cabbages!). We had a lovely dinner and left with a cookbook we won in the raffle (and a condom each!). Before this we called into the new Terminal 21 shopping mall, purely because we'd heard they had japanese toilets with heated seats, bottom shower and dryer - we weren't disappointed! Then we went on to Central World for the big countdown, which was quite spectacular. Lots of fireworks (which actually started 2 mins before - it was almost like they were so excited they just couldn't wait!).
This morning we've been to little america to the outdoor olympic size pool. It's got a bit hotter here the last few days so it was really refreshing. Tomorrow we're taking 3 of the kids from RH out for ice-cream and a dvd, so looking forward to that.
Finally i'd just like to thank everyone for all the kind messages, emails and skype calls of support i've had. I'm sorry i'm not always able to reply to them individually but i really appreciate them. It makes this all a bit easier. I also know that a lot of you have asked how you can help. In terms of sending stuff out its difficult for the government kids as they can't have possessions. But we are allowed to take them out on weekends - swimming, for ice-cream, cinema etc. So this is really when we can treat them. So if anyone wanted to support that please let me know (email: gemanne83@hotmail.com or facebook) and/or you wanted to know a bit more about what its been like.
Anyway, hope all is well with everyone and happy 2012!!
lots of love xxx
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