Medical Musings

The orphanage seems a cheerful if somewhat crowded and chaotic place. Most of the smaller children seemed playful and full of energy. All of them smiled back at me and many asked questions about what I was doing when I took their blood pressure, pulse, and respiration rate. Dale had told me not to tell them I was counting their respirations, and several asked me what I was looking at as I watching them breathing. They also tended to wiggle and giggle when I took their blood pressure, and I had to repeatedly ask many of them to sit still. One nineteen year old girl named Elana has been blind since she was fourteen. Her parents did not take her to the doctor soon enough when she was going blind or possibly it could have been prevented. One wonders what the future holds for her, since she can only stay at the orphanage until she is twenty-one and is not receiving any education or training on how to take care of herself. Her parents abandoned her. Some other children at the orphanage have likewise been abandoned. It may seem easy to condemn parents for doing that, and it may be beyond our understanding how they could abandon their own children, but perhaps we should try to understand rather condemn. If it is already difficult for them to survive, having a handicapped child may be too much of a burden to bear. Even if drugs or alcohol or abuse are involved, the powerlessness and hopelessness that results from grinding poverty may be the root cause.

Shirley Moore