MARYBETTS SINCLAIR Now in Korea – Letter # 3

                                                     
On to Korea – And The Work of Molly Holt
After an uneventful overnight flight to Seoul, I was honored to be met by 2 incredible women, Molly Holt (78 or so) whose parents began adoption of Korean orphans after the Korean war, and Dr. Cho, 79 years old, a pediatrician. Molly has devoted her entire adult life to taking care of the children here, currently 250 disabled children and adults. She is soft spoken and immensely kind and compassionate. Molly’a parents were from Creswell, Oregon, and started Holt by adopting 10 KOREAN children into their own family in 1955.

Molly went to nursing school at U of O, then got a masters in Special education a few years later. She has nursed countless sick and disabled children in her home, advocated for them in numerous ways small and large, and helps care for children (now grown) who were never adopted, helped them train for work, find marriage partners, provide places to live, and much much more. (Many of the children here today are severely disabled, cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, autistic, mental retardation, and
mental illness). I find myself repeatedly moved to tears by her presence.

Yesterday I went with Molly to 2 church services. The first was
here at Holt’s own church, which was was filled with disabled people and
wheelchairs, lots of singing of old christian hyms in Korean, including a
choir of mainly disabled folks. Fun! Then to a bigger church in town,
Korean Evangelical Baptist, I think, over 100 folks in the congregation.
Molly translated what seemed a pretty darn good sermon to me, then we went
out to lunch with friends, including adults who began life as orphans at
Holt and are now married and living on their own in the community, also a
Korean pastor and his wife who do endless advocacy for the same group of
people.

Afterwards, we went to visit 3 people who usually live on the Holt campus
but are now very very sick. We went first to the intensive care unit of a
hospital, where there were 12 patients in beds in one room. Molly checked
them carefully for bedsores, level of consciousness, circulation in feet
and hands, blood pressure and other things, spoke kindly to them, and
talked to the nurses about her concerns. Both were in medication-induced
sleep. We then went to a nursing home to see another young man with
epilepsy and many other problems who she was very concerned about. She may
be a private citizen but I got the impression she can come into these
facilites with an incredible backlog of goodwill for her decades of
unselfish work…

…And Dr Cho
Dr. Cho has been a pediatrician her entire adult life, and worked long,long hours in children’s hospitals for many years. She would examine as many as 60 children in one day, and can’t quite understand why all the other doctors would quit after a few months! She has tried to retire 3 times but has been called back each time. She says “retirement would be boring.” She oversees many small details regarding care in the orphanage, and is on hand ready to help when needed. She has a great sense of humor.

Her English is honed by many years of writing reports for Holt that had to
be in English, and what a role model…

We went for a long walk this morning-only a tad slower than
I would usually walk-and she filled me in on various things regarding the
clinic. She had questions about whether massage could help with some
specific problems such as chronic constipation. I then taught my
first class to a group of perhap 20 housemothers. We began by watching a
short film of Dr. Tiffany Fields doing massage with a small sick infant in
an incubator, to make the point that there is always a way to massage
someone, if only you can fine-tune the technique for that person as an
individual.

                              
Teaching Korean Therapists
Then I demonstrated massage for oral-motor stimulation, chronic constipation, and deep muscle tension from spasticity. These women have awesome skills, taking care of children with very challenging conditions for years at a time. The big question, is how they can find the time to do massage, busy as they are. Some of the “houses” contain such severely disabled children that they require a lot of work right now, so when can massage be added practically? A geat many of the children are chronically constipated due to their conditions, and sometimes even with the best of care can develop abdominal obstructions and have to go to the hospital. The challenge is to figure out when can abdominal massage be added to their treatment? Like with parents of children with special needs, just adding more and more therapy for them to do at home may overload them…

Kids With Vision Difficulties
Something else I note that is very discouraging, especially being trained as a natural vision imprivement teacher, is that almost all of the children here appear to have some type of visual
difficulties such as strabismus (cross-eyes, lazy eyes), nystagmus, difficulty focussing, etc. Many of these problems can be helped tremedously by behavioral optometrists and natural vision improvement
techniques, and yoga teacher Sonia Sumar (she specializes in working ith children with special needs has) done wonders with yoga eye exercises, but the time and money for this is not available.

I also worked with the physical therapists today, we saw a little girl with cerebral palsy who is self-abusive (hits her head on things when she becomes frustrated), another little girl with lifelong
constipation (she is 3 years old), and a little boy who is microcephalic. They were very interested in learning massage techniques they could incorporate into what they do.

Korean Paralympics
The opening session for the 32nd annual Korean national paralympics took
place last night, and I had the good fortune to be invited along, as Molly
is a true VIP in the area of disability rights due to her dedicated work
of so many years. The ceremony, which took place in an enormous sports
stadium, was 3+ hours long, and was a multi-media extravanaza. From our
spot on the floor near the podium/stage, we could see a huge screen
displaying live performances of mixed Western and Korean music, from
classical orchestra to footage from the Lion King, a flock of gorgeous
babes in sequin dresses singing “O Happy Day”, a slick 4-member boy dance
group all in black with many sizzling hot moves, fireworks, torches going
off and on at strategic moments, a line of Korean drummers with enormous
drums and flaming drumsticks pounding out a rocking beat…it went on and
on. (shades of London 2012 opening ceremony?)

Finally the Paralympic athletes got to come onto the field, and this was a moving sight, as many
were in wheelchairs or walking with crutches and beaming with pride. I am
pretty sure many of them could kick the average persons you-know-what, as
they are all conditioned athletes. The games start tomorrow, I may skip
them as I am only here 4 more days and feel more of a drive to be useful
while I am here.

Checking Out the Local Spa
I went instead to the local neighborhood Korean spa one
night with Molly’s nephew, (hydrotherapy research, right?) and it was
wonderful, no clothes, a super hot sauna/steam room, hotpool, cold pool,
dandy body scrub by a lady wearing black bra and panties, naked Korean
women of different shapes and sizes,the cold plunge pool had an overhead
shower that could blast a person half-way to China, felt great if you got
down just above the water.

Just overhead and up another story was a hot clay sauna shaped like an old
beehive, a hot room with hot quartz crystals you could lie on, outside these were soft mats on a marble floor you could sleep on, even a restaurant.

Back To Work
Today I worked with a little blind guy who has a bad habit of sticking his
fingers in his eyes, a woman with cerebral palsy who is 60 years old, of
normal intelligence, with a frozen shoulder,a little boy with osteogenica
imperfecta (brittle-bone disease), a little girl who bangs her head
against the floor or anything else when she is mad, another little girl
who is chronically constipated and also drools all the time (she spent
almost 20 minutes mouthing the electric 3-legged vibrator I had brought,
then resting her cheek against it, then mouthing it again, as if she
craved the stimulation intensely and was really intent on somehow getting
it), another little guy who drools constantly, and a few others. The
housemothers sat with me and learned some massage techniques. They are
wonderful with the children.

Finally I taught a one-hour infant massage class for a group of 25 foster mothers, which was a lot of fun, the babies were just adorable and the foster moms so good with them…

Last Day in Korea
My last morning here I saw three children I had worked with before. The
little girl who was banging her head all the time came in and, although
initially very cranky, was much easier to calm this time. Then, each time
she became upset, either I or her wonderful housemother did massage and
tapotement on her back, and this immediately calmed her down and she
showed signs of just loving the touch. If only I could work with her for a
couple of weeks, every day, to see what we could do…

The little girl who drools all the time was easier to massage today, but also intent on having
the stimulatior of the vibrator around her mouth and especially on her
tongue, I have rarely seen such a small child (2 years old) so focused on
one type of stimulation. For at least 20 minutes, she barely moved other
than to move her lips and tongue onto and off of the vibrator, then after
a while, turning her head to one side so the vibrator touched her jaw
joint. We had music playing in the background, and she definitely enjoyed
it, but it was as if she had a job to do…

The third child was the little guy who sticks his fingers in his eyes, and he did not do this while we
were there, but that was only my second time of working with him and the
only change I saw was he showed signs of really enjoying the touch on his
face, which he had not done the first time. His housemother is tremendous
with him, and I hope she will have time to do the simple things I showed
her…

So, see you all soon, hope this is not way way too much detail. I am so
happy to have been on this trip but look forward to beautiful Oregon and
wonderful friends.!

Marybetts