Empowering Patients Using SALT

[Marc]

Hello ALL,

I've been away from the site for a bit so im now back to catch up and to share a few pics from my visit to the HIV ward of Georgetown Public Hospital. Yesterday was my birth anniversary so i felt the urge to take breakfast for the patients and nurses of the HIV ward of the Hospital on Saturday.

All went well as planned, I prayed with them, we talked, laughed and i took the opportunity to empower them on being more proactive upon returning to society.

It's been a great working with the UN, NAPS and Youth Challenge, being able to empower them about the SALT and the Super Safer Sexual Skills.

ALL praises to HIS Majesty!!!!

[Michael Mc Garrell]

I know you had a happy birthday, nice, i like the way you spent it as well. Only yesterday a colleague of mine who works at a private hospital invited me over to do some translation during a counselling session for him. They are treating a patient who is Brazilian and speaks no english, it was hard from them to do a proper diagnosis so that treatment can be prescribed. They could only work with physical signs and lab tests however they could not get from him what he was feeling etc. It is difficult to make people who are sick see their strangths as a outsider you can see the strength however to help them realise that strength is difficult. The patient was smiling when he learnt that i spoke Portuguese, he started relating to me everything he wanted to say for so long, he cried for a bit but in the end after the session would have finished he said to me that he wanted to live, and that he will live, he will take his anti retrovirals as prescribed because he knows that he still has life and he can live for years to come. He was very sick and hospitalized in the last year, he even sought treatment back home in Brazil, he suffered a stoke to his left side which had him paralyzed for a while, however he is back on his feet walking, I used his story to let him realised that it was the strength in him that made him come back like that..he will live for a long time, i know..

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Dear Marc,

I highly appreciate the way you celebrated your birthday. One who is sick wants someone to spend time with and show concern. That's what you did. I met someone in Mizoram, Northeast India who donates his blood on his birthday. I need to take a leaf out of your book.

Best regards,

Rituu

[Laurence Gilliot]

Hi Marc,

Welcome back! And Happy Birthday! It was my birthday on Friday so we were born almost the same day, with a few years in between ;)
It is such a good idea to spend your birthday with patients and health staff at the hospital. I'm sure you had a good time with them.

Is it difficult to see strengths in people who are sick and weak physically? How do you make them feel better and help them discover their own strengths?

Laurence