tiny casts

Meet Anne. She weighs a whopping four pounds, with almost half a pound of that weight coming from the tiny little Ponseti casts on her tiny little legs. One of the orthopedic surgeons who is responsible for casting her (the one who sometimes thinks he comes from southern California) says that hers are the smallest clubbed feet he's ever worked with.

Next to Anne in the bed lies her twin, Annie. (Or Anna. Or maybe their mama's name is Anna. It gets confusing. I can't imagine why.) Annie's feet are straight, so she doesn't manage to tip the scales over four pounds. Their mama cares for them in turns, tucking them into soft blankets that envelop them so only their big brown eyes, huge in their little faces, peer out.

Anne got a nice long bath this morning while a surgeon and our orthopedic coordinator soaked off her casts before replacing them with another set that will pull her feet a little more towards straight. Instead of the buckets they use for older kids out on the dock, we used a blue basin with a towel draped over the side, a real Africa Mercy spa treatment. Anne's not heavy, but when mama's back started to hurt from leaning over the table at an awkward angle, I was more than happy to relieve her.

I took Anne in my hands, the weight of her almost nothing, and she rested her head with its spiky baby bird hair in the crook of my thumb and finger. When she started to cry, I spoke soft words in Ewe to soothe her. Evo, evo. Baba de. Baba, baba. It's okay, no more. It's okay.

She stopped crying and fixed those big brown eyes on my face, and right then I realized all over again what it means to be a nurse. What it means to hold my patients' lives in my hands, to ask them to trust that I can fix it when they're scared or hurting. What it means for mamas to relinquish their little ones into our care, complete strangers who are somehow going to be the ones to make it all better.

I leaned over and kissed her little cheek before placing her in the next set of hands that were ready to hold her, the next person ready to lean over her and whisper quiet words to quiet her cries.



(Photos by they very talented Liz Cantu.