Our last full day in India!

Whew! Today was VERY busy. We conducted a 3 hour training session for several orphanage staff members and professionals from the daycare for MR students. The orphanage staff included 2 social workers, the superintendent, the pediatrician, and 14 teachers! We were very impressed with their interest and feel their support will be very beneficial to the success of the home programs we designed.
After our training and lunch, per our request, we visited a school for hearing impaired children (Preschool to 4th grade). THIS WAS AMAZING! The WORTH program is a non-profit program (the only non-profit in all of India that has surplus!!) that is funded by revenue obtained via plastics and other products manufactured at the school. The manufacturing lines (ONLY) employ physically impaired and hearing impaired individuals from the community! We love that concept!!!!!! And, since Teresa is partial to the Hearing Impaired population, this visit was very special. During this visit, we were really hoping to find adequate educational placement for some of the boys at the Ranipet boys' home. Although WORTH was not appropriate for these boys, the superintendent had some better ideas. Thomas and Ruby were very excited about this, as were we. It appears that networking is very important here in India!
Here is an interesting concept (and this is VERY simplified, so forgive me if I mess up)...the woman who established the daycare for MR students is married to a local congressmen (they aren't called congressmen here, but Ruby and Thomas told us he is equivalent to a state level congressman). She invited us to her home for tea tonight! It was such a huge compliment to be invited into her home and she was a wonderful host!
Ruby asked us a very interesting question on our way back to the hotel this evening. What will you take from your experience in India? We each had very different answers:
VIKKI said, "Stepping out of my comfort zone is very important to make a difference in a child's life. I always put my kids first and yet there was this opportunity to touch the lives of many other children. Others should remember that we are so blessed and that we should embrace an opportunity, take a leap of faith, and step out of our comfort zone."
SHANNON said, "We have actually helped a culture and not just a child. Even though we may have a higher education level, others who are not as lucky as us still have a hunger for knowledge. A moving moment was when the orphanage pediatrician (and the superintendent) extended his gratitude to us for training the boys' home staff. The pediatrician said he recently bought a book on speech and language development to increase his knowledge in this area, as pediatricians in India receive no formal training in speech and language development." By the way, between the pediatrician's and the superintendent's appreciation, both Vikki and Teresa were crying before it was even time to say goodbye to the boys!
TERESA said: "I have a whole new appreciation for understanding the difference in our 'value' to children/parents/caregivers in India versus the US. It has been very humbling that we have a gift to share....a gift that I normally take for granted. While we have been in India, I think that we have been reminded how well we fit in the field we chose and that we are truly appreciated for the work we do on a daily basis."
More pictures from the Ranipet boys' home and Hope House girls' home coming soon! Please pray for a safe return flight!

CMC and girls home

Wednesday, 27-1-10...in India, the date is written with day first, then month, then year!
We finished our 25 reports from the testing that we conducted at Ranipet Boys' home. We recommended that 6 receive direct therapy from an SLP at CMC (Christian Medical College), we referred 8 boys to doctors/specialists (ENT, etc.) , and we designed home/orphanage staff programs for 11 boys. These 17 boys will be followed monthly via Skype by Cole speech therapists to monitor their progress.
After our morning of report writing and reviewing, we visited the CMC to observe sub-acute, re-evaluations for stroke patients. Teresa watched an Occupational Therapist (OT) conduct a cognitive assessment--which is not typical in the US, and probably due to shortage of SLPs in the CMC hospital. Vikki and Shannon saw initial evaluations and rounds for post-TBI and stroke patients. The hospital system at CMC is very different than what we have been exposed to in the US and we learned a lot of different approaches and perspectives (e.g., community functionality from the perspective of village living in India).
After we left CMC, we visited the Hope House girls' home in Vellore, India. Vikki and Teresa were fighting over a specific girl to take home--and Teresa won :) Just kidding! But we fell in love with several of the kids that are supported by The Hope House. We enjoyed an Indian burrito and time with the girls. Most of them referred to us as "Auntie" and gave us kisses on the cheeks when we left the home! All the girls are sponsored by various individuals across the world both financially and emotionally. Due to government regulations, the process is a little slower for the boys' home. The boys are in the process of developing a pen pal via email system and we thought that many Cole Therapy Center employees would be interested in participating in this project. Thomas will inform us when the pen pal program has become official.

See our video of the boys at Ranipet boys' home

Day two of testing

Today (Tuesday) was Republic Day in India! This morning we watched a flag raising ceremony at our hotel and wore India flag stickers on our Cole shirts all day! This afternoon, we finished our speech and language testing at the Ranipet Boys' home. We tested an additional 12 boys, gave a crash-course in fluency techniques for a stutterer, and trained Thomas to work with the individual. All of Teresa's and Shannon's boys were very well behaved and attentive. They so wanted to perform and be successful for us. Teresa's boys especially loved the candy taste of the tongue depressors! MOST of Vikki's boys were well behaved and attentive...one of them needed quite a bit of encouragement to attend to the task. We are so aware of the sensory overload in India (car horns, animals, people, smells, etc.) that we cannot even imagine living here and having attention and/or sensory deficits.
Now we are beginning to develop home programs for some of the boys and short term goals for the boys who need an SLP to work with them. We hope that one of the therapists that we met with earlier in the week will be able to pick up a few boys for some treatments.
We have awesome video footage of the boys giving us a tour of the orphanage grounds...their library, temple, kitchen, dorms, garden, classrooms, etc. They LOVE taking pictures and making movies. One of the boys even sang a song that they sing when they worship in temple service...got that on video!! The boys all come from different faiths but all faiths share the same temple on the orphanage grounds. After we finish our reports tonight and this blog post, we are hoping to upload a video of the boys sending a special message to our friends at Cole Therapy Center! If we can't upload it, we will DEFINITELY share it with you when we return to the US. They are such sweet boys!!
In the process, we have a few "favorite" things about India to share:
Teresa likes the boys' smiles and handshakes, dosa (like a crepe in the shape of a dunce cap served with yogurt or curry dip)--YUM!!!, and the Tamil word for cat-"puna."
Shannon likes being emersed in the culture and interacting with the kids and bringing a smile to their face.
Vikki likes that the boys are so happy to have our attention. They laugh and smile, skip and run, play games, and try to use as much English as possible with us.
Tomorrow we will head back to CMC to meet with ENTs and visit the Girls' Hope House Orphanage in Vellore. Thursday we will be training the staff on home programs. We will be sure to keep you updated!

CMC and Daycare visits

First of all, Vikki and I (Teresa) are having trouble--it appears, based on our most recent restaurant visits, that the whole state of Tamil Nadu is OUT OF Diet Coke! Anyone up for Fed-Exing some to us? :) The Pepsi is giving us a sugar rush!! However, Shannon loves it!
We visited the Rehabilitation SLP (her name is Veena) at CMC yesterday. Rather then working directly on-campus at the hospital with in and out patients, she works at a CMC sub-acute care facility that is India's equivalent to our TIRR-Memorial Hermann in the Texas Medical Center. This rehab facility was established by a female surgeon who was paraplegic. There is such a tremendous demand and desire to be treated there, that the wait time to be admitted is one year! Veena (an SLP who earned her Masters) recently worked with the biomedical department to design and construct a device for post TBI and stroke patients to work on labial closure. It was really fascinating! Veena gave us a tour of the facility. There are some really cutting edge programs there. They are doing stem cell research to find treatments for spinal cord injuries...remember, CMC is a Christian hospital so the stem cells are being removed from people's nasal cavities! Christopher Reeves' foundation funded that! We met the biomedical engineer on staff at CMC Rehab. He showed us a lab with video cameras and computer programs set up to record and analyze patient movement while walking. That was really cool!! And the PTs at CTC and CRPT will LOVE this--there is a prosthetics and orthotics department right there in the rehab facility! PTs run down there, explain what they need for their patient, and people start making them right then--talk about quick turn-around! It doesn't seem that the rest of India is like that, as far as quick response time. Thomas calls it "India standard time"---people here are almost always late for appointments. We met a "recreational therapist" who was a paraplegic and volunteers with patients at the CMC daily. In return for his work, he only asks the hospital to send someone to his home in the morning to assist him into his wheelchair. The staff and volunteers at CMC all have such incredible compassion and generosity.
After we finished our tour and meeting at the CMC, we visited a daycare for children with mental retardation. We met with the staff and director (a special education teacher) and learned that in India "Mental Retardation" is a label given to all kids with Cerebral Palsy, Autism, Downs Syndrome, etc. We were shocked and frankly upset to hear that. We tried to explain to the director that that was outdated...she didn't agree. We met several children and tried to give the staff some tips about how to address a few aspects of speech and language treatment (PECS, visual aids, auditory sensitivity). They need a lot of help to make the program more functional but the employees have very good intentions to help their students access the community and communicate with friends and family. MORE on our testing at the Ranipet Boys' Orphanage coming soon!

Our adventures in India so far!

Hi friends and family at Cole Therapy Center!
We want to share some of our tourist adventures from North India and continue sharing our stories from the orphanage while we are here in South India through the rest of the week.
We experienced the fog, extreme volume, and close proximity of traffic in New Delhi (the capital of India). The fog caused us to circle in the air above the airport for at least 30 minutes, then we were parked on the tarmac for an additional 2 hours--we were on that plane from Chicago for nearly 18 hours total! Then we arrived at our hotel at 4am and "napped" until 8a so that we could drive 4 hours to the Taj Mahal. As our driver said, cars have "no rules" in India! They drive in both directions on both sides of the street. Cars, people, animals (cows, monkeys, dogs, goats, pigs, etc.), and carts all drive on the same streets at ALL speeds. They use the horn to "communicate" with eachother--unlike Texas, they do not believe its rude to honk, so they were honking CONSTANTLY! We were awfully glad the car had seatbelts and our driver was quite attentive to our safety (WHEW!). On our way, the driver paid taxes to cross over to other states. While he was gone, we wanted a picture of monkeys on leashes walking with a man. We rolled down our window to get a better picture only to find that the "friendly" man wanted 500 ruppees (equivalent to approximately 10 US dollars!). We waited for our driver and he gave him 10 rupees (about 30 cents) and the monkey man was happy! During another stop, when our driver wanted to get some tea (he drank 6 cups of tea each day!), we tried to enter the restaurant with him--but it was a male-only establishment. These three women from America really surprised the men in there! OOPS! The Taj Mahal was absolutely breathtaking. Our driver and our tourguide told us some very interesting stories that wouldn't fit on this blog--google the Taj Mahal to read about its history or ask us when we return :) We also experienced some shopping and the market in New Delhi, where we learned that Americans are VERY spoiled with clean, air conditioned malls and Wal-Marts! There are two airports in Delhi (domestic and international) and we spent several hours waiting for our delayed flight to Chennai...
After spending a few days in the capital of India (New Delhi), we arrived in Tamil Nadu (a southern state in India). This is the state where Hope House International is located. Thomas and Ruby, the directors of the Hope House, are our hosts and they are so compasionnate and have such BIG hearts. In the state of Tamil Nadu, we flew into the capital (Chennai). Thomas and his employee drove us for 2 hours to Vellore/Ranipet, the 2 cities where the Hope House girls and boys orphanages are located. The next day we visited the Christian Medical College, equivalent by India standards to our Texas Medical Center. It was established by a woman from Germany about 150 years ago. We can go into further details about the history of CMC, but to sum up, it started with one bed under a tree and now it has 2500 in-patient beds! They treat approximately 6000 in and out patients per day. We have some awesome video phootage of the Physical/Occupational Therapy and other rehabilitation wings. Physical and Occupational Therapies are much bigger departments than Speech. The two speech therapists we met are very hard working women (they see approximately 30-40 patients per day for 30 minute individual sessions)! They asked us some awesome questions about apraxia, phonological discrimination, and augmentative and alternative communication. Even afer we return to the US, we are so looking forward to sharing more of the knowledge that ALL of the Cole Therapy Center therapists have to give our new Speech Therapist friends in India! After we met with the therapists, we visited the boys' home and the boys are so friendly! They all enjoyed introducing themselves, asking our names, and following with "you too" after we said "nice to meet you!" They love to play soccer, basketball, and cricket. They play chess, put together puzzles, and read books in their new library.
Today (Sunday) we began our testing at the orphanage. Vikki and Ruby witnessed an orphan who was considered "non-verbal" repeat simple words like mom and dad in Tamil! Shannon was as fast and efficient as ever--six kids tested in short morning and afternoon sessions. And Teresa learned that her name was very difficult for native Tamil speakers to imitate so the boys changed it to Maria! We still have a lot of work to do--much more testing, a meeting with an additional Speech Therapist (she works as an in-patient, acute care ST), a meeting with staff at a day care facility for locals who are mentally impaired, and training for the orphanage staff to implement a "home program" with a few of the orphans. In the meantime, please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We will keep you updated! Vikki, Shannon, and Teresa