Angelita

The first patient of the day was Angelita. It had been 8 months since she had sat up. She was between 40 and 46 years old, but she wasn’t sure because she didn’t know when she had been born. She had severe rheumatoid arthritis wih severe hip and knee contractures, and couldn’t reach her hands to her mouth because the joints in her shoulders and elbows had disintergrated. She spent all her time living on her back in a small windowless shack on a raised platform bed with a hole dug in the floor for a cooking fire. She had a board on her platform bed that could be slid out to open a hole through which she voided while lying on her back. She could inch along on her back like a worm to move to the side or up and down on her small platform.

Her 7 year old daughter was now in charge of taking care of her. Her daughter lit the fire, cooked their meager meals, and washed and cleaned her. With the help of Florence we sat her up for a few minutes each day. By the last day she could sit for half an hour independently. I instructed Norma, the missionary, how to help her with exercises and she was going to talk to Hugo, Angelita’s brother, to try to get him to help her sit each day. Angelita had a long disused wheel-chair, and hopefully with the brother’s help she could get up to the wheel-chair and out of her windowless room.