Monday, April 12th - Our "Home" Orphanage

Monday morning, 7:30 am (after a couple hours of sleep), breakfast in the hotel cafe. My favorite "meal" in Ukraine: cappuccino and juice (separate, not mixed - ha!).

Kym and Christie enjoying their cappuccinos.

Gregg (the equipment man), Kym and Christie (PT's), and Kati (OT).

Abby (OT), me, and Amy (both of us are speech). We coordinated our scrubs by discipline. :)

We left for the orphanage by 8:30 that morning. We first met with the director and his wife. Keep in mind that Amanda from our team has adopted 3 children from this orphanage, and Kym has adopted one child. The director was so very excited to see us. We showed him pictures of Kym and Amanda's children, and more pictures that others who have adopted sent along with us. You can see that this director loves the children by the look on his face when he examines their pictures. After welcoming us, he said he knew that in America "time is money", so he put us right to work with the kids.

They brought child after child for us to work with all morning, with caregivers and doctors carefully observing everything we did. We got to work with 3 children we had seen the previous year, and several we hadn't seen. Each discipline demonstrated what they would do with each child. The doctors and caregivers had many questions, and the session flowed very well. Fine motor, gross motor, speech/communication, vestibular input, massage, AFO use, and use of the stander and walkers we took were all demonstrated. It was awesome that the staff had so many questions, and such good questions at that! Gives us reassurance that the techniques will continue once we leave.

Kym telling about the binders we gave to the staff, with Olga translating. Have I mentioned that I LOVE this woman? We bombard her all day (week) long with therapy terms and soooo much information, and she takes it all in stride. Not to mention we bombard her like crazy with documents to translate for months prior to the trip. She's so wonderful to have with us!

Kym loving on a little girl we saw last year, too. This girl is precious! AND.... the best part is that I heard thru the grapevine that a WONDERFUL family is in the process of committing to adopt her!!! It's so hard to say "ARE" adopting because there are so many unknowns throughout the stages of adoption. Anything can happen. But there is a family who loves this girl and is seeking to make her one of their family! SWEET BLISS!!!!

Christie and Kym have her up on her elbows, working on position for crawling.

They wrapped her arm with coban to provide a cue to straighten her elbow for crawling.



She's in position. Ready, set, GO!


She was SO HAPPY to be in the stander. If you're a PT, you know that this is not always the case when you're putting a child in a stander for the first time.... Just another way God works in Ukraine!

Just SO happy! And I must say that this little girl was not quite this happy when we saw her last year. She had recently been left at the orphanage by her parents, and she cried quite a bit.

Amy and I working with another little one that we got to see 2 years in a row. We were working on chewing with a chewy tube, and he was loving it!

Sweet innocence!

Christie demonstrating massage with the same little boy. They are all about massage in Ukraine. They always ask so many questions about it.

And.... he's in a walker - needing some assistance, but working hard!

Oh my goodness, what a CUTIE!!!

My boy - I LOVE this child. He captured my heart last year, and recaptured it this year. I want someone to adopt him so badly. I want it for ALL of the children, but there's just something about this one.... Please someone from northwest AR adopt this child and let me be his speech therapist!!!

His smile.... his laugh... his enthusiasm and feistiness!

He absorbs EVERYTHING! I just wanted to hold him and play ALL day...

He would work, work, work, all day long. I'm sure of it!

I'm telling you.... There's nothing like his excitement!

He LOVED watching himself in the mirror.

This sweet girl was being fitted for braces. She was so quiet and observant. She took in everything around her, and was so smart!

Around 12:30, we had lunch with the director, his wife, and the other doctors. We showed them a DVD of Kym, Karen (another PT who has adopted from this orphanage), and Amanda's children and portions of the DVD included in the binders, about school and therapies. They had many questions for us about school, therapy, and some general conversation questions, like who of us had dogs. Ha! The director presented a plaque of artwork that the children had made to each of us. When Christie went to get her plaque, Amanda was going to take a picture but had the camera turned the wrong way. She got a good picture of her hand, and the few of us sitting at that corner of the table got a good laugh out of it, particularly since Amanda is our "technology" person. We were already so exhausted by that time that I can't just make fun of Amanda. We all had our moments.

After lunch, we were able to go to some of the rooms to assess children they wanted specific help with. Each discipline did a quick assessment, and later that night we put together charts for each child with recommendations and instructions with illustrations for how to do the recommended therapy techniques.

When we were getting ready to leave the special needs room, I handed the child I was holding to a caregiver, and after she put him in the crib, she came back to me with her hand out. So, I handed her the toy keyboard I was holding. She grabbed it AND ME to pull me up off of the floor. She then gathered me in a huge hug! It was such a loving moment. They all seemed so happy to have us there.

Some OT work on the ball.

What a look! And check out little cutie in the background. Haha!

This is the sweet girl mentioned above, who is in the beginning process for adoption.

This picture makes me laugh! This is exactly what we looked like most of the time, except for the demonstrations where everyone was watching - we moved through each child and discipline slowly at that time. In the rooms, it was a group effort to assess as many children as we could in order to make recommendations they could carry over in the orphanage.

This little boy was so cute, but we could NOT get a smile out of him. We all tried, and the best we got was a neutral face. He had been asleep before we came in, so I guess we messed up his routine enough for him to be a little unhappy with us.

This little one was so super cute! She has arthrogryposis, and the orphanage staff had never heard of it. Thankfully, we had several therapists who have experience working with children with arthrogryposis, and we were able to provide them with much information about it.

Amanda receiving her artwork plaque at lunchtime. Whoever took this picture had the camera turned the RIGHT way. Heehee! Sorry, Amanda! You know I love you! And I admitted that we were all a little loopy and did crazy things out of exhaustion.

Sweet babies!

Outside of the orphanage. This place appears in my dreams, and sometimes quite frequently. :)

A picture of one of Amanda's children on the wall in the orphanage. The picture on the left was taken in the orphanage, and the picture on the right was in the last couple of years.

A picture of Karen's son on the wall.

While we worked in the orphanage, Gregg spent most of the day with Vova, getting supplies to make standers and corner chairs. Gregg began getting a little nervous about how it was all going to work out. When he asked, "What about... this... or that...", Vova replied, "It is ok, it is fine, it will work." Gotta love Vova!

Our hotel. Hotel Kramatorsk - home away from home.

A trip to the grocery store.

Monday night we ate at DaVinci's, but somehow I added this picture of us at Premiere's. This was dinner another night. I have trouble keeping all of the pictures straight. :) Speaking of DaVinci's, though, Kym and I shared potatoes with mushrooms and cheese, and chicken in a sour cream sauce. It was the first time I tried any kind of meat in Ukraine - I'm a little weird about meat in general. Last year I lived on salads, pickled vegetables, and potatoes. This year I got brave. I must say that it was yummy!