Thursday, November 23, 2006

You know what? Today was a good day! As Joey would say, Dancu, good; hospital, good; Dacie, good; outreach, gooood! Even this morning before I ever even left home, it was pretty good. I got up early to use the computer and I was actually pretty productive! I finally emailed Roberta! I also updated the blog a little, which made me feel a bit better. Shannon was feeling sick, so I made the decision to go to Dancu by myself. The thought scared me a bit, but I wanted to. Anni and Nuti were working and it was great! One of the reasons why I was a little worried about going without Shannon was that I almost never work with Iuliana and I was afraid she’d throw a fit and I wouldn’t know how to calm her. She was great thought! When I first got there I spent like 10 minutes with Petrica. Then, I spent quite some time with Mihai and had a ball. We crawled along the floor (since they aren’t aloud on the floor, I lay on the floor and put him on top of me and slither around, usually camping out by the toys), looked out the window, and read among other things. When I was reading to him, I couldn’t find the normal “Catelusi Veseli” book, so I had to use this one that they have that for some reason is in French. But, instead of reading the French, I would just tell him whatever I wanted to tell him and I used it as an opportunity to just pour out all my feelings for him. Roberta mentioned in her “closure” assignment to tell the kids your feelings for them, even if they don’t understand and that was the perfect opportunity for it. After Mihai, I spent some time with Iuli and it went fabulously! First, I jammed with her, singing and patting her with the beat. Then I tickled her, and then I just held her and rocked her and sang to her. While I was doing that, the workers came in for a while and just played with the kids. Anni came in first and saw Mihai leaning over the chair backwards about to slide headfirst onto the floor (his constant goal) and she just slid him down and let him be on the floor! Then she proceeded to play with him being on the floor and would practice having him pull himself up! It was sooo perfect! Then, if I was hearing correctly, I think she and nuti had a little argument about whether or not the kids should be on the floor! That may sound like a bad thing, I mean, it’s an argument, but no! It was so good! Finally, one of the workers realized that it was a bad them for them to never be aloud on the floor! I may be wrong, but I think Anni was saying that if they’re never aloud on the floor, they’ll never progress and I think Nuti was just arguing that it’s bad for their health. Well anyway, after they left I was with Iulia for a little longer and then went in with Costica for while and then back out with Petrica. While I was with Petrica, the workers came back in and put Mihai in the little wheely chair thing. You know, those things you put babies in where they can just walk with it and push themselves around. Well, it kind of worked, like he could push his legs from the front to the bag, but he wouldn’t bring his legs back up again. It was really cute though, watching both workers trying so hard to get him to do it and just having so much affection for him. I worked with him on it a little bit after they left and with Petrica a little took and then I went and had lunch! It wasn’t as bad as usual! The soup had no galuste (cornmeal ball things) and lots of potato, and the bread was fairly normal! At the hospital, I started off with Nicu on the 6th. He was crying when I came in (I can see institutionalization starting already) and I changed his diaper and then rocked him for a minute. Pretty soon the orderly came in and gave me a bottle, but right before I could give it to him, a nurse came in to inject something in his IV, which is in his foot. When she started to inject it, he started crying and screaming bloody murder, so she was like, “un pic moment” (one minute) and took him away. When she brought him back in, his feet had little shot punctures in them and the one that had the IV in it had a big lump that looked like an enlarged vein and she wanted me to keep pressure on it with a cottonball that had alcohol on it. It hurt, so he cried til it stopped bleeding and I took the cottonball away, but he calmed down real quick and almost immediately started to fall asleep. Like, in between taking off the cotton and sticking his bottle in his mouth, so I blew on his face a little to keep him away and successfully got him to finish the bottle. He, of course, promptly fell asleep right after and I handed him off to Bri! Then, I went with Marina to the 3rd floor. She was with Iliuta and I was with Daniel, who are both in the same room. I’d never been with Daniel before. He’s like 14 and has Down Syndrome. He’s incredibly skinny (you know, like the malnourished kind), he’s blind (you can tell because of his cloudy white pupils), and has scabs on his neck because of scratching himself (typical of the blind kids. He doesn’t talk and is really out of it and he likes to move his head, jerkily to one side and clench his jaw each time. He just likes mashing his teeth together and making that noise I think. He got surgery on is stomach and so I could see the tip of a very hastily sewn (Romanian stitched) wound because his shirt wasn’t fully buttoned. It’s amazing how strong of a stomach you can have when you need to have one. At first he was laying down and I’d just hold his hands or tickle his armpits (love his laugh). After he heard a bunch of nurses and orderlies come in, he sat and then stood up. When he was sitting he would get really excited and try to basically pull me in. He would grab hold of my watch and use it as an anchor to pull me in. I was pretty good about derailing it his efforts, although I did get one scratch close to the watch (he digs in with his nails). I also got a little scratched on my face, because I wanted him to feel my face and he just grabbed it and dug his nails in. After that I had him touch my face with the back of his hand. Ok, so I also have to mention an interesting scenario that I came across. Marina left after a while to go visit another kid, so Iliuta was by himself. He’s institutionalized and therefore pretty bad tempered. He has a ton of toys on his crib, but he always wants more. He came to the edge of the crib and started point at my bag and asking for more toys. I said I didn’t have any and he got upset and went over to the other side and started just whining/crying. So, I’m sitting here looking at this kid and I’m wondering what to do. On the one hand, my mind says “he’s institutionalized and is just going to get upset no matter what I do. There’s no way I can just keep giving him toys and that’s not really going to make him happy either, it’s just a quick fix. I know the only way he’ll be comforted is by giving him a toy and so I would feel silly leaving Daniel, just to probably make him more upset.” On the other hand, my mind says, “ok, institutionalization or not, this is just a poor little four year old kid who is feeling lower than low and I can tell. He’s got a burn wound and is stuck in a hospital all day and other than that is stuck in an impersonal facility without a mother. Give up all your excuses and just go try to comfort him.” What’s the answer? Well, after a while, I left them and went to the first floor. I took over for Abbi, who had been with Ionut. He didn’t look so good. He has a net around his head (like a hair net), he looked really uncomfortable, kept squirming, had reeeeally dry skin and kept spitting up. Sad child. I think he’d be so much happier in heaven and that’s really his only home, because his condition can only get worse. There were two other moms in the world. One had a child of about a year who had Hoffman’s disease. I’m not sure exactly what that is, except that it makes your muscles weak, so you can’t really move much. The other mom had the most adorable twin girls Lois (after Anthony’s grandmother in the Bible) and Sarah (Bible again). I spoke with her a lot because she spoke pretty good English and found out that her husband is a Pentecostal preacher and she’s from around Vaslui. Jenna came in and talked to us too and we held her girls and put these little animal hats on them that Jenna brought for the Dacie kids. It was adoooorable. We met Melissa at 4 and took the tram to Dacie. Along the way, the tram ran into a taxi. As in, the taxi was too far to the left on the road and so when the tramvie went by in scraped along the side of the taxi, right below our window. I’d say definitely taxi’s fault. Either way, the driver got out and was all mad and yelling and they were arguing. Then he got back in and slammed the door shut and sped off. A little while later, somehow we caught up with him or something and he got in the tramvie and started arguing with the driver again. That makes one pedestrian hit by a car, 3 car accidents, and one fist fight over road rage that I have witnessed in these 2 and a half months. Remind me again why people here don’t believe in seatbelts? Oh yeah, it’s Romania. Dacie was fabulous. I sure love those kids. We had them all try on the hats that Jenna brought. They included one moose hat, one bear hat, on princess headband thing and one green eye mask. My favorite combinations were these: Costica with the princess headband, Marian with the moose hat, Viorel with the bear hat and Mihai with the mask. Apparently Georgiana is getting fostered, like, tomorrow, which is crazy. I’m really happy for her and it was great to see her so excited about it, but it’s hard to just say goodbye just like that. I love leaving Dacie because the kids all go to the table to eat, but try as the workers may, they never eat much til after we leave. They just peak through the kitchen door at us putting on our shoes and such. Even when I don’t pay attention to them in an effort to get them to focus on their food, I still hear the occasional, overexcited “pa!” And when I look over they all ring out in an enthusiastic chorus of “pa’s” and “te iubesc’s” and “sheri’s.” It’s just precious. Jenna, Melissa, Shannon and I all happened to catch the same tram to outreach. I was the last to walk out the tram doors and just before I stepped out, Jenna asked me to look back to make sure she left nothing on her seat. I turn to do so and turn back just in time to see the doors shut in front of me! I panicked for a second and then pushed the button and luckily they reopened! We had quite a good laugh after that and I had flashbacks to the New York subway (that one’s for mom!). Outreach was fabulous too! I spent the first little while talking to Raluca and Sora Wright, who were making pumpkin pie, while Stefana did my hair in a crazy hippie braid thing. After that, Jenna and I (and sometimes other people) started talking with Elder Toomey, our cool new British elder. He’s so fun to listen to! Like, I think I could be entertained for hours by just watching him, even though I’m not attracted to him an all. Like, the way he talks is just so cool! I’ve decided I could never marry a Brit, because I’d never really be in love with him. I could never take him seriously and would just constantly be like, “hehe, coooool.” So, I was fascinated by his utter Britiosity (cool new world, thank you very much) and he got an incredible kick out of the fact that I’m from Orange County and have the last name of Money on top of it. Oh, and on top of the fact that he has a great accent and says really funny things, his name is Ashley! That, quite possibly, just completely made my day. During our conversation, Elder Sorensen would occasionally pipe in with the occasional awkward comment. You know, I really don’t mind him at all any more and I think he’s really quite entertaining in a very interesting sort of way. I never really diiiisliked him, persay, but he’s always been weird and I think I’ve learned how to fully appreciate that. At the end of outreach, we all tried on the hats (everyone loves them!) and took pictures! Yay! Um, hehe! Ok, so I think I finally reached the end of writing about this day! Now that like 2 hours have passed! Hey, it was worth it!