Sylvia's Journal

Today felt festive, much like the last workday before Christmas. There is excitement as well as dread in the air, again, just like Christmas. For some Eid is too full of family obligations to be enjoyed. Several people are taking the days after Eid off on personal leave, to recover. What is the purpose of such holidays, really? To exhaust us and empty our pockets?

I picked Axel up for a shopping expedition while I went to see my PT at the military hospital, aka the 400-bed hospital. I no longer have to show my patient card, the guards know me. After the busy and well guarded gated entrance to the military hospital you enter an oasis of peace, a funny combination: peacefulness and the army/wounded soldiers. The grounds are well kept and you can tell that the water/pond arrangement was a nice idea, except there is no water and it looks more like an empty swimming pool now.

There is much marble used on the outside of the hospital. It looks expensive and reasonably well maintained, at least from the outside. The Kabul Orthopedic Organization is tucked away in a far corner, not quite as nice from the outside, but functional and simple inside.

The female treatment room was full today. One lady who had had a stroke on her left side, sat in a chair parked in front of a walker. She was assisted by her daughter who kept putting her paralyzed left hand on the walker but it kept falling down. The patient had had a stroke. She looked like she was in her 80s and her daughter about my age. As it turned out she was 66 and her daughter in her forties. The stroke came from hypertension, a common condition that is often not detected until it is too late and the cause of many deaths and disabilities. It is sad that the illness is so easily detected and can be treated for pennies a day.

Another woman, of unknown age (I stopped guessing) and rather obese, was being strapped into a contraption to immobilize her spine because of compression fractures that had happened some months ago. It was a more primitive arrangement of straps and hard plastic than Axel’s plastic corset but, if worn all the time, should work. The problem was that the woman was not wearing it because she couldn’t do housework with it. The PTs had asked her to come to the center and wear the brace while performing typical household tasks like folding blankets, cooking while squatting, etc. It was a clever move from the PT staff as she was cleaning the treatment room while they watched her.

A third woman, accompanied by her 21 year old daughter was working on strengthening her back muscles while rolling up and down a large yellow exercise ball. I could tell it was hard work and not something she’d be easily doing at home. While she was resting from her exercise with a frayed hotpad on her back she asked me how many children I had, the kind of basic chit-chat conversation I can now hold in Dari. She laughed when I said 2 daughters. ‘That’s all?’ she asked in disbelief. I understood her disbelief, as she had 14 and was only 44. That basically means she has been pregnant or nursing all of her adult life and, after her first menses, never menstruated again.

Everywhere I go now I look how people avoid the fumes from their stoves. The PTs had a good solution, they used plaster-casting tape to make the pipes tight and keep them immobilized. Another form of appropriate technology was the wheelchair, constructed from a plastic chair and a metal frame, two things that are easy to come by here, very clever.

I was once again greeted with three kisses by my physical therapist. She told me the swelling in my shoulder had gone down. She massaged the sore shoulder and then administered the gentle electric current to shock the muscles back into service.

After my session was over I visited the on-site nursery for the children of the female staffers where my PT was nursing her 2-month old. It was a brightly decorated room with baby crib bunk beds and a potbelly stove in the middle of the room. Two- and three-year olds toddled around the stove as if it was an innocent piece of furniture. It is hard to imagine such a setup in a workplace nursery back home.

Axel picked me up after an hour of shopping and we did some more. We stocked up for five days without a cook and being at home a lot. We can pretty much get anything we want here, including maple syrup and Girl Scout cookies (Thin Mints) from a very adventurous Girl Scout or Troop. I wonder how they got here. It certainly deserves a special badge.