Martes/Tuesday

On Tuesdays Jean and I do our respective therapies at Casa Angeles in Tegucigalpa. There are 13 severely disabled kids who live there. Everything from down syndrome, cerebral palsy, hydocephalus, microencephaly, epilepsy, blindness can be seen here. Even though they´re lucky to have Casa Angeles, it´s sad to see because of the lack of resources/technology/education. The kids are just laid out on mats where the spend practically the entire day. The tias/aunts (caregivers) do these crazy therapies with them called Glen-Downman therapies. It´s hard to watch. For some the place the kids (even the blind ones) in a cardboard box and switch a flashlight on and off as the tias chant in succession, "luz"/light "oscuro"/dark over and over again. I do feeding therapy with the kids during breakfast and snack time. It can get quite messy. These kids have great difficulty swallowing any consistency of food! In the United States many of them would be listed "npo"/no food by mouth, but here in Honduras it´s safer to risk feeding them by mouth than to give them a feeding tube where there is a high risk of infection. I usually begin the day at 6:00 am and we leave around noon. Then we have the afternoon in Tegucigalpa to eat lunch, go grocery shopping, go to the internet/telephone cafe, drink a licuado, etc. Then we either bus it or jalon it back to the ranch in time for hogar. Tuesday nights are usually early to bed, as this is an exhausting day!