this is why i'm here....

this has been one of the hardest experiences of my life.  there are moments when i wonder what the heck i'm doing here.  but then there are moments that remind me.  these are some of those moments....

i was in one of the wards (aka huge rooms filled with tons of beds...no private rooms here!) treating a baby and i saw this little boy lying in his hospital bed looking like he was about to cry.  he was probably about 8 years old and was lying in a room full of crying babies and you could tell their crying was breaking his heart.  and then there was this other little boy about 5 years old probably who was also in the ward.  well they found my bubbles and they came up to me with the bottle.  they can't speak english and i definitely can't speak their language.  but within minutes they were dying laughing.  we were making silly faces at each other and just being goofy.  then the next day i walked into the ward and they came running up to me, smiling so big.  maybe that doesn't sound like a big deal but when you walk around these wards for a few days it becomes a really big deal.  kids smiling at this place are rare.  so the smiles made my day.  i had a music box thing with me and they were intrigued.  we played the music box and marched down the hallway to the ward like we were having a parade.  in that moment they seemed like normal, healthy, happy kids and i remember thinking...this is what i came here to do.

another day i was working with this patient who had a stroke a few years ago and just recently had his leg amputated.  it was the first day i was seeing him and we were working on standing up out of a chair...which is incredibly hard to do with one hand that doesn't work and one leg that is gone.  he got frustrated and started saying he felt stupid and dumb.  i told him how amazing he was doing considering what he had been through.  by the end he was almost able to stand up by himself and he was singing me a song he made up about me.  he told me that i was good at my job because i am good at encouraging people.  that's what i came to do.

i have this 17 year old boy i worked with for two weeks who was burned badly on his leg and back.  burns over joints are incredibly painful because you have to stretch the skin while it heals so it doesn't heal back in a shortened position.  imagine stretching a scabbed knee and times it by a million.  the thing is though that he has the potential to be completely fine if he is just willing to work through the pain.  he isn't willing to work through the pain though.  one day i spent about an hour and a half with him.  we had a little "come to jesus" meeting.  he kept telling me that he would rather die than be in this hospital.  he's been there for almost two months and no one usually comes to visit him.  we had a heart to heart and by the end he finally believed that he was going to be better.  he was able to tell me that he realized he had to work through the pain but he would because he wanted to walk again.  he was smiling and laughing with me.  i was suddenly his best friend in the world because i spent a little bit of my time paying attention to him and showing him there's hope. 

i had this other little patient who was about two years old.  he had pretty much been abandoned at the hospital.  his grandmother couldn't afford transportation to come visit him.  it was the first day i saw him and i went to get him out of his bed.  he reached his arms up to me and just curled up in my arms.  then he pointed to my lips and his cheek...wanting to be kissed.  we cuddled that day for about 30 minutes.  he was so hungry for love, for someone to hold him.  i may not have done much good for him as far as physical therapy goes, but i'm realizing here that most the kiddos need to be loved way more than they need PT.   so i just let him curl up in my arms and kept him there.  that is what i came here to do....love the unloved.