The "Grinch" Baby & Florine

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

I woke up in the middle of the night last night with the most stabbing stomach pains, and couldn’t go back to sleep. There are two foods that I have been eating more of in the past three weeks than I have in my whole life- bread and cheese. They are cheap to buy and come in every variety and kind you can imagine. I think all the cheese is what’s making my stomach upset. Almost every meal I have eaten has had both included in it. It’s just hard to eat much of anything else. Fruits, veggies, and eggs have to be bleached first. We have no microwave, we have no way to tell what temperature we are baking things at in the oven, and we have limited kitchen supplies. We also don’t have a lot of time during the day to cook while running between the hospital, orphanage, and apartments. The girls and I in my apartment, though, do take the time to make good dinners. That gives us at least one good meal a day.

Because I didn’t get very much rest last night, I stayed at the apartment and caught up on sleep in the morning instead of going to the orphanage. With being around so many sick kids, I need to be getting adequate sleep and stay as healthy as I can, so I don’t end up getting really sick!

In the afternoon, I walked over to the hospital with some of the girls. I went to several floors today. I try and visit as many orphans as I can each time, but there are a few in particular I make sure I see every visit. One of them is a little girl we all like to call “The Grinch”. She’s the most adorable thing, but she is always frowning. When we try to make her smile, she fights so hard to keep frowning and covers her face when we start getting her to crack. The first day we visited with her, she frowned the entire time. Then yesterday, she seemed a little happier when we came by and even laughed a little bit. Today, she got a big grin on her face as soon as we walked in the door and stayed happy the whole time. When I held her, she clung onto me really tight and laid her head on my shoulder. She cried and cried when we had to leave. I am glad she is getting to trust us!

The condition of the other little infant I always go see, absolutely breaks my heart. I have kind of a hard time going to see her, but make sure I always do anyway. She breathes really loud and is constantly gasping for air. It’s like she is suffocating all the time and her mouth and nose are almost completely blocked with mucus. I have never seen her not crying. She is constantly gasping for air with tears just streaming down her face. Every few minutes, she also stops breathing and makes a face like she is choking. When this happens, she cries a lot harder but no sound comes out for a few seconds. It’s scary, but she always will let out a huge gasp and starts breathing again. She makes this quiet quivery noise all the time that just makes my heart break. She seems so helpless. I’m thinking that the hospital can’t really do anything for her, and she just lays there and suffers.

Today I placed my hand up close against her face and just gently rubbed her cheek, so she at least can feel someone there with her. I also lightly rubbed her legs to warm them up. She was sweating like crazy, yet she has really bad circulation in her legs and feet and they are always ice cold. I did this for a long time, and finally to my surprise, her crying slowly stopped and her breathing stabilized a little. After only a minute or two, she had to take a big gasp of air which made her start crying and choking again, but at least I know now how to help her stop crying for a minute. I am going to bring one of those blue suction things tomorrow and see if I can clear some of the mucus out to help her breath better.

Before leaving the hospital, I made sure to stop in and say hi to Marios. He was watching a movie when I came in, so I ended up visiting with another patient in his room named Florine. He is 14 and also severely burned, but from the midsection down. I don’t know how his happened. Like Marios, Florine is a very optimistic boy. He is smiling all the time. One intern took her picture with him and soon he was asking to have one taken with every intern individually. Then he wanted to know how soon we would give him copies to hang on his wall. We’re going to develop them this week and bring them by his room.
Florine (He had candy in his mouth)

I remembered I had a pack of colored pipe cleaners in my backpack, and decided to give Marios and Florine a couple. When I pulled them out, a mother of a third burn victim staying in that room came over and asked what they were. When I showed her what to do with them, she took a few over to her three year old. Florine got to work right away, braiding a bunch of pipe cleaners into one big one. Marios couldn’t bend his own, but had fun picking up and looking at the ones we made for him. The kids kept asking for more and used almost the whole pack of pipe cleaners. I was glad they got so much entertainment out of them. We also blew up a big red balloon and it cracked me up when Marios and Florine started smacking it back and forth between their hospital beds. They really got into it. They both have been in the hospital for so long, and I think it’s great when we can help them find little things to do to keep them busy.

My volunteering assignments were changed just slightly again, but are finally set. I will still be going to Isolation on Monday through Friday in the mornings, but now instead of going to the hospital every afternoon, I will just go on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday or Sunday. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons, I will go to Dacia 3rd and 7th apartments for an hour each.