Good Karma brings good things.

It is 11:07 P.m. and I am blogging just after Danielle and the rooster is crowing! We are LOL! Oh oh...now there are two of them, make that three....hold on.....(seriously we are listening to this and laughing with tears coming out of our eyes) rooster crowing at 11 at night...they must have the night shift.

Okay I am a day behind but I was on heaven yesterday with Karma highs and lows. It started with a low...I went into the intensive care unit (also know as a filthy tent with dirty sheets and electricity...sometimes) and was working with a patient when another patient coded as the therapist was walking with him....and just like E.R. they did all the drills on this 25 year old with multiple people doing CPR, I.V., bag, you name it...but they lost him. The grieving process is different in Haiti, the family will chant and raise their hands to ward off bad spirits and if they die the family wails for hours very loudly and it was distressing to see the death of a young man right before your eyes. We left shaken and somber....as I walked away I came upon one of the many people I had literally begged for a wheelchair for the last few days...I did my usual...Hi Hamill...do you have a wheelchair for me? As I was speaking I looked at what he was doing..he was unwrapping a box....like Christmas in April...he said it was the only wheelchair that had come in and he was saving it for me....I am crying again as I remember how I just started crying when he gave it to me...I think he was taken back a bit by my response. I RAN over to the family to tell them that I had gotten a wheelchair for her...and as if it could not get better...I came upon my new friend a Physical Therapist who had been able to get her accepted to go to inpatient rehab in a facility in SPAIN...imagine that..she will live there for the time it takes to get functional enough to come home. (Note today she walked 60 feet!!! that is like just learning to play basketball on Monday and being Michael Jordan by Thursday) I was exuberant. So back to work and went to the skilled nursing facility (also know as a broken down catecomb building without electricity that just looked like a broken prison without staff) Leaving there our friend Lisa from our team told me she had just been a film star with a documentary from Denmark I believe. They were following up on a story about a little girl that in the news following the earthquake that had survived only because her dead mother laid on top of her...During her film career she discovered a tent of children that for all intent and purposes had been left alone without medical staff or therapy. We went there on Wednesday and I returned today and spent the whole morning doing therapy with each and every one of them and handed each of them coloring books and crayons which are the ONLY possession they have besides their one change of clothes. The one boy Woodson who has more metal coming out of his 10 year old arm then a transformer told me very politely that both his mom and his two brothers died in the earthquake...I couldn't stop from crying and he was comforting me...unbelievable. He took the coloring book and very, very slowly turned each page as if to savor the experience for a longer period of time....unbelievable. So my day continues...
I then went to see the woman with the stroke and by good karma ran into the gentleman from Hanger Orthopedics and Prosthetic....this is the group that I shadowed in Columbus and who had dedicated enough resources to set up a permanent clinic and lodging for people that need prosthetic limbs. Their facility is consider the premier prosthetic clinic in Haiti and the U.S. nationwide...so by chance I came upon him...as he explained it was the first time he had been to this hospital and was only staying for half an hour. I brought him to the directors and the doctors and told them that all the children and people that had been lying in the tent for the last 2 months could get free prothestics and lodging for both them and a family member and even 2 meals a day....what a blessing...and the directors and the doctors had no idea they could send all of these people somewhere to get help and independence.

So I felt like I couldn't have had anymore karma come my way....yet as I came home tired, excited, energized and filthy...I slowly walked up the stairs and came to my suite to find a wheelchair at my door...with a note...Hugs and Kisses from Sean Penn (aka Rachel and Megan to the rescue) I began to cry again happily

kimberly