Challenge

Our project challenge is to stimulate and broaden the prevailing area medical mind set that advocates cerebral palsy “maintenance” (food and shelter) rather than self-help.  Such a mind set reinforces the myth that children severely affected by cerebral palsy more or less exist in a permanent vegetative fog, unable to learn basic skills.  Our challenge involves two specific goals -  assisting individual children with cerebral palsy as well as using the project as a hands-on teaching tool for students and teachers of physical and occupational therapy.  It is our hope that whatever gains these children are able to achieve while in our care can help to expand locally existing cerebral palsy perceptions. 

Our Initial Residents

In accepting our first 3 residents, we made no attempt to manipulate the selection process or select only children with recognizable intellectual potential.  On the contrary, our first 3 male children (two age 12 and one age 14) were the first 3 random children which came to us needing help. All 3 had spent their former lives living under extremely neglected and difficult circumstances.

• Nong Mai is an ethnic minority Lahu child who was confined inside a bamboo cage and then abandoned by his mother and father in a remote mountain village near the Thai/Burma border .  He came to us severely malnourished, covered in body lice, and suffering from extensive skin infections caused  by lying in his own urine and feces.  His muscle strength upon arrival  was literally non-existent.  He could not hold up his own head nor could he selectively move his own limbs.
  
  
• Nong Wichai is the Thai child of an alcoholic father and mentally distressed mother.  He came to us through a local group of foreign residents who were trying to help improve survival circumstances  for this suffering family.  Not only was Nong Wichai surviving both cerebral palsy and hydrocephalus, but he had recently survived a fall into a 4 meter deep well near his parent’s home. Wichai arrived at our door distressed, hyper, and frightened.
  
  
• Nong Somsak is the son of a disabled father.  He had been cared for by his father and elderly grand parents because he was abandoned by his mother.  His father collects, and sells recycled trash for a modest income.  When he arrived in our care Nong Somsak ‘s legs were rigid and crossed.  Reportedly he had been lying on his back on a concrete floor for all of his 14 years. 

As far as we were able to determine, no attempt had ever been made to provide self-help training to any of these children.   They all arrived without any form of previous toilet training or bowel control.  None of them could verbally communicate.  


Small Miracles

We do not expect dramatic or sudden changes.  On the contrary, we anticipate slow, patient,  and incremental changes made possible by persistent and repeated effort within and surrounded  by an environment of  love, security, and dogged determination on the part of our staff.  In less  than 2 weeks of residence, we have already seen Nong Mai learn to regularly drink through a straw, roll himself over on his own, stand (with support) flat on his own feet, recognize various objects by their sound and size, and support the weight of his upper torso, neck and head by his own energy.  Similarly, we have watched Nong Wichai settle into a routine where he can entirely feed himself  sitting at a child-sized table (where he has arranged his own chair); recognize, fetch and carry requested objects; and easily pull himself to his knees by grasping our wall mounted support bars. 

Within the next month (November 2008) we plan to re-examine and re-evaluate each child’s  specific medical challenges…. Nong Somsak’s rigid and crossed legs; the vision problems Nong Wichai experiences via his often wandering eye (and how that may be related to his hydrocephalus  and head rolling); as well as Nong Mai’s frequent inability to sustain a visual focus on a given target.
As we discover and learn more, we will keep all of our supporters appropriately advised. 

Special thanks to Mike at infothai.com.

Warm regards from Don and Sunan Willcox.