We hit the ground running Monday morning after having such an adventure-filled weekend in Machu Picchu and Pisac. The groups working with preschoolers and in the high-needs classroom picked up where they left off working on their projects, and the rec team went out on home visits.
The rec team met up with Celeste and two representatives from the Municipalidad Saylla and made our way to the home of a 21-year-old Quechua girl with an unknown diagnosis. She lives in a 2-story adobe home with her parents but lives solely on the first floor, spending the whole day in her wheelchair. We suggested modifications for positioning in her chair to facilitate her participation in family life. Next, we worked on safer transfer techniques between her bed and the chair to improve her strength in addition to decreasing the amount of effort required by her mother. She also has a walker, which we adjusted to fit her height better and practiced walking from bed to her wheelchair and encouraged her mother to assist her in walking every day.
Our second visit was to the home of a 12-year-old girl who presented with right hip dysplasia. She currently lives in a single-story adobe home with her grandmother. Her family told us that she has balance issues, but we were unable to assess her balance because she recently stepped on broken glass. She has stitches on the bottom of her foot and is unable to put any weight on her right foot. Her injury forces her to stay in her bed throughout the day. Despite being bed bound, our team was able to provide some exercises that she will benefit from. Upon evaluation, Jennifer found that the 12-year-old girl has tight calves and was able to provide some calf stretches.
At Camino Nuevo in the preschool classroom Katie, Becca, and Bridget continued to make adaptations to the chairs by covering the feet in felt and purchased supplies to fill the sensory bins. They also honed in on individual student needs by adapting writing utensils, incorporating trays to prevent activities from slipping away, and using binders to angle writing surfaces.
Olivia, Savannah, and Kiera rearranged the classroom so that students who use wheelchairs can sit around the table together with the teacher to encourage socialization and group activities. They created a modified universal cuff out of non-slip material to facilitate gripping of markers and paintbrushes to enable the students to participate in creative activities. They also assisted one student with walking on uneven surfaces using a hula hoop for support and facilitation of trunk flexion.
Bridget and Heidi’s groups left in the afternoon to visit the home of a child named Luis, who has mild CP. We met with them as they were walking home from school and accompanied them up a very steep rocky hill to their home. The house is two stories of concrete floors, with the bathroom on the first level and bedrooms and kitchen upstairs. He held onto his mom’s hand the whole way, clearly not feeling confident scaling the hill or the stairs alone. We observed his mother change his clothes after school and gave recommendations for the family to let Luis be as independent as possible with all ADL’s. His left side was more affected than his right, so we threw and kicked a ball back and forth to encourage use of both sides. They expressed concerns about his falling and not being able to catch himself, so we taught them a “wheelbarrow” exercise to encourage fast upper extremity extension reaction time.