In addition to the O&P center that the mission group supports, they also support a group home named the Bernice Johnson Center which is both home and school for young women with disabilities. There are currently 12 women who live there and a few of them were in need of our services. Most of today was spent finishing the fabrication of an above the knee prosthesis for one of the girls. Of course everything that could have complicated the project happened. We had only one sheet of the correct plastic to finish the project, so everything had to work without a glitch. I put the plastic in the oven and had 3 people ready to assist. Although one of our helpers was deaf and mute, and the other spoke only Creole, I think I did a pretty good job at using my pantomime skills to make sure that everyone knew what they were supposed to do and when they were supposed to do it. The plastic was ready to come out of the oven and be draped on the cast to be vacuum formed for the final and most important part of the prosthesis. We lifted the hot molten sheet off the tray and carefully placed it on the mold. Everyone was doing their task as planned, but for some reason we weren't getting the vacuum that we needed… it was not pulling in the way it should... we started to scramble, and then we figured out what was going wrong and attempted to fix it... it was just about working and then all of a sudden we lost power in the building as the generator broke down. No vacuum at all, and the completion of the project was at stake... we had to think quickly, and start hand molding the plastic to the mold in hopes that it would take enough of a shape to be functional... it wasn't going to be pretty, but it had to work. About an hour and a half later we got power back, and I got to cut the socket retainer off of the model. We were lucky... it pulled in tight enough to provide a stable support for the inner socket and we were able to complete the project successfully and do the final fitting and gait training as our final task before cleaning up and packing our belongings.
During the late afternoon we were treated to cake and soda while the girls from the Bernice Johnson Center provided musical entertainment for us. A few of the girls played instruments and others sang in groups or solo for us to express their appreciation for the help that we are providing to the community. It was a nice closure to a week of very hard work. I have a feeling that I will be seeing many of these people again some day.
One of these pictures shows the completed prosthesis that was mentioned in today's blog. You may notice that we used the top of a water bottle for the valve in the socket. It worked well, is very inexpensive, and able to be repaired or replaced very easily.
Labels: haiti, prosthetics, travel