Indelible Roots

A couple of weeks ago this little guy shows up in the therapy room with his left hand bandaged. He started pulling on the pulleys and in general making himself a nuisance. Busy at the time I told him to go away and come back later to no avail. So I then picked him up, placed him outside, and closed the door, obtaining about an hour of respite.

Chalk, his nick name (it means bald though he has a full head of hair) turned out to have polydactily and amniotic band problems on all of his extremities. The index to the ring finger of his left hand were one finger and they had recently separated the index from the other two. He is very compliant with gentle ROM and will sit when told to for therapy. But at any other time he is here to play and give orders.

If I am working on another patient he constantly tells that patient what to do as if he were the therapist. I had a hand contracture gal picking up and lifting items from one chair to another once when he came in. He then started to tell her “faster faster!” and then placed other items on the chair for her to pick up. She almost smacked him.

Wanting to see what his surgery site looked like I followed him to the nursing room once to see them remove, clean, and re-bandage him. It took two people to hold him down and I left. At a later cleaning I observed the nurses again telling him not to cry and threatening to cut off his fingers as usual. Having had enough I sat him on my lap and did the wound cleaning myself to minimal complaints at a slow speed and needing only minimal reassurances.

Chalk shows up all the time in the therapy room to goof off. He’s a very bright six years old, knows almost the entire English alphabet, and is really a lot of fun to have around. I saw him outside the main patient bay the other day and started poking him in the ribs. He then poked me in the groin to the collective exclamation of the dozen people sitting outside the doors. He ran off and I walked away only mildly embarrassed to have been shown up by a six year old.

Another time he showed up at noon and started goofing off. I was tired and told him to leave, to come back at 1. He left and came back ten seconds later. So I tossed him out and locked the door from the inside. He then started yelling through the door, but I didn’t respond. After a few minutes he took the wheelchair from outside the door and started ramming it into the door. I wondered if he would end up breaking the glass. About fifteen minutes later he gave up and stopped. Until I opened the door again that is and found him ten feet away.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 11:28 pm and is filed under Khmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.