Seating workshops and assessments

Hello again, I'm writing this in the departures lounge in Heathrow Airport on the final leg of my journey home. I had a lovely three-day visit with my sister and family in Cambridge, UK on my way home from Nepal – and we even got spectacular weather for the weekend. It was great to see them, particularly my niece Cayley, even if briefly. A few pics from that time are here.

I had a great final week in Nepal – mostly in Pokhara enjoying hanging out with friends (and eating many dalbhat dinners with them). Here I'm playing carrom board with Ruku and her sons again. It's a popular local game that is a cross between crokinole and billiards - very fun, though the boys were way better than I was at it! I also visited Green Pastures Hospital a few more times, to wrap up a few details, and check out how some of our seating recommendations had turned out. I then had 2 days in Kathmandu to visit some expat friends on my way home. It was wonderful to get a chance to catch up with everyone. I've posted pics from visiting friends in Nepal here.

This post, however, is mostly about the extra time we had at Green Pastures Hospital, where we did more wheelchair seating workshops, and helped them assess some patients with more complicated seating needs. These sessions were all organized at the last minute, but turned out to be some of the best time we had with the hospital staff. Our first extra session was us teaching/demonstrating a seating assessment using Sita (the hospital peer counselor, who has a SCI and is in a wheelchair) to local staff, as well as those stranded due to the strike. Then we moved on to some other challenging cases, and these were much more collaborative. We were able to make suggestions based on our assessment, and the local therapists helped us understand each patient's situation and what was possible with the existing resources. Then together we were able to come up with some solutions.

One of the challenging cases included a girl with spina bifida who had previously got around before by dragging herself along the ground, and as a result had developed bad pressure ulcers on her leg, and it had been amputated above the knee. She had an non-healing ulcer on her right buttocks that meant she needed to offload that side. She was planning to use here new wheelchair to get from home to school.

Another boy they brought in specially for us to help out with, given the challenges of seating him. He had cerebral palsy, and at 11 was getting to big for his mother to carry him around any more. He could not sit up unsupported, and we needed to be creative on figuring out how to seat him in a standard wheelchair. Bellow are pictures of the assessment, the production, and the version that was ready the day before I left Pokhara.

We also spent some more time using the pressure mapper Shaun had brought to assess some of the locally available cushions, and compare it to the expensive donated ones we had brought from Canada. We had a willing test subject (with his family looking on) in a young man who had recently come third in the national wheelchair racing competition. Disabled sport is still in its infancy in Nepal, but is slowly developing. Sita hopes to compete in the first every swimming competition in a month.

All in all, it was a very worthwhile trip to Nepal. The workshops were well received by the staff, and we got good feedback that they were useful to them. It was great for NepalAbility to renew their links to Green Pastures Hospital (and with a couple of staff from Tansen at least). I've posted the rest of the pictures from the NepalAbility training sessions and our extra time in Pokhara here. For me it was amazing to be back working in a place I love, and to catch up with old friends. Perhaps we will be invited back to the 2nd National Spinal Cord Injury Workshops that they hope to host next year!