The last stretch

Well, it's the last week of my time here in the Dominican and we're all preparing to say goodbye. My favorite patient, the boy with a tumor in his brainstem left to get chemo at another hospital yesterday. Sometimes it's hard to think you're making a difference out here because I'm trying to educate the parents on what can help their children in spanish and I don't always know if they completly understand me. However, talking to this boy and his family and seeing his mom point to her son, us and then God made me realize how showing the parents the exercises and how much we care is so much more important than knowing a specific exercise.
We went to the oncology unit for the first time today. I started to talk to a little 3 year old girl who was undergoing chemotherapy. At first, she was really shy and wouldnt play with me, but by the end, she was laughing and smiling and trying to tap as many bubbles as she could. I made a sick little girl smile- I love how even though there's a language barrier, smiles and laughter is universal.
These 4 weeks have been so challenging. Each day, you have to go into a hospital room with 8 beds lined up and I have to simply pick a child and eval them with minimal or limited knowledge of their past or condition. It's very exhausting to eval child after child in spanish with limited resources as to their condition. I've learned so much, but I'm getting ready to go home!