Village Life

Audry is one of our volunteers.  She shot this video of Thottanaval Village.  Thottanaval is where Rising Star is.  This video is great! 

http://vimeo.com/21687075

You Tube trailer

This shows a good over view of what we do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwNSwPMuJPY&feature=player_embedded  

Meet my friend King Kong

Yes, that is his real name - King Kong.  He works at the Marriott Courtyard in Chennai.  The Marriott is one of our sponsors so they come to Rising Star every other month with food, games and fun.

Meet my friend Jennifer

This is Jennifer.  She is now 8 years old.  Her story is amazing and inspiring.
Jennifer is the oldest of 3 children.  India encourages parents to have one child but they don't enforce any policy for limiting the size of a family.  When a couple marries, they move into the husbands parents house and the new bride becomes the cook and housekeeper.  The mother-in-law is the authority for everyone.  The bride's dowry becomes the mother-in-laws possessions and the bride now lives a life of servitude.  Women really don't have any rights until a son gets married then they wield power with a vengeance.  A daughter is a huge liability and even more - a daughter with leprosy is of no value.  Jennifer contracted leprosy as an infant. 

  Her mother gave her poison but Jennifer survived.  She was treated for leprosy and is now cured. Then the grandmother/mother-in-law told the couple they had too many children and they had to get rid of Jennifer.  So one day her mother put 3 year old Jennifer into a dumpster then her father, mother, sister and brother moved from their small village to the city of Chingelput.   The next day Jennifer's maternal grandmother found her crying and hungry.  She took Jennifer home, cleaned her up and fed her.  They lived in a colony that the medical team from Rising Star goes to every 2 weeks.  On the medical teams next visit this grandmother approached our doctor and asked if Rising Star would take Jennifer.  
Now Jennifer is a kind, beautiful girl who excels in school.  She is clean, sleeps in a clean, safe place and eats 3 meals a day.  She talks about her past openly and remembers all of it.  She also tells people she hates her mother.  When asked what she wants to do when she grows up her immediate and confident answer is "be ä doctor."

Usha

This has been a wonderful day which fulfilled a 10 month project. Usha is a very sweet, soft spoken, 9 year old girl. She has feet that are completely flat. Painfully flat. She has ankle and knee pain now and will have hip pain in a few years. Daily she comes to me rests her head on my shoulder and says "Auntie, feet hurt. Auntie, knees pain."

Last summer we had an orthopaedic intern here who took impressions of her feet and said he would send special made shoes to Rising Star for Usha. When I arrived in October she would regularly ask if the shoes had come. They never did show. 
I asked Dr. Susan if she thought a surgeon here in India could do surgery to help. She had Usha seen by two different orthopaedic surgeons at different facilities who said she needed exercises. When asked more they said yes, she needs surgery and they really didn't know the procedure but if we insisted they would do their best. There were x-rays taken at the first appointment.

When I went to Utah over Christmas I took the x-rays to Dr. Tom Rogers in American Fork for his opinion. Dr. Rogers is a very fine podiatrist. He took one look at the x-rays, at the pictures I brought of her feet and said the feet need surgery to re-construct the arch. Exercises won't do any good. He offered to make orthotics (a temporary fix), He also offered to do the surgery at no cost and would ask IHC to donate the facility charges. I was so excited to tell Usha.

In January I made impressions of her feet using casting plaster (for broken bones), packed then in bubble wrap and kept them until new volunteers came to Rising Star. Heidi and Holly Hyte took the impressions to Utah the middle of February and delivered them to Dr. Rogers.

We have a wonderful friend who lives in Lehi, Nikki Shirliff.  She is Dani's mother.  She picked the orthotics up from the doctor's office, used them to buy quality running shoes in the right size and delivered them to Stacy. Stacy is an MBA student at the 'Ú' . Stacy arrived at Rising Star today with shoes and orthotics. I can't tell you how excited I was to take them to Usha.

When I got to Usha's hostel she came down and saw the shoes in my hand. She knew what they were. She has asked about them many, many times and I always said they were being made just for her. Her eyes were glistening. I explained she had to wear them only a few hours the first day because her calf muscles will get sore. After an hour of wearing them she came to me with a huge smile and said, "Auntie, no pain." This has been a beautiful day.

First Job Description

When I came to Rising Star in India I had no idea what I could contribute.  On arrival I was asked to get the medical clinic organized so it would function as a clinic.  I was shown a small room with an examination table, a desk, computer and lots of 'stuff'.  It was full of odds and ends that no one knew what else to do with.  It had a case of Burt's Bees Baby Lotion and Cream Kits.  What do we do with a case of product meant for babies?  We will never have babies here.  I found decks of cards, old and crumbling cotton dressings, empty bottles of evaporated alcohol, wool blankets (in the cold season from November to January the temperature drops to 75), two cases of essential Lavender Oil, two old blood pressure apparatus with rotted tubing, 1000 tubes of lip gloss (the humidity here keeps all skin areas moist - I don't even use lip gloss here) etc., etc.  I spent a couple of weeks going thru everything, sorting, cleaning, organizing and labeling.  We then removed everything from the room and tiled the floor then painted the walls.  We replaced the shelving, the desk, put in a small refrigerator for medicines, an autoclave to sterilize instruments, the examining table and a metal cabinet for medicines to be stored in.  Then I went thru all the medical records for 184 children from the past 7 years - repaired the worn books, glued in a sheet to keep track of all immunizations given and put them into sets according to the hostel family each child lives in. 
Each evening from 4 to 6 I helped Dr. Susan with medical exams.  The children would come to see her with all sorts of complaints.  Some of these patients we called the TLC group.  They really didn't have a medical problem but wanted to be touched, loved and told they are just fine.  I still give lots of hugs. :) :)  Some of the kids have a serious problem that has to be addressed.  We have been thru tonsillitis (remember 184 children) and pink eye. 
One of the true concerns is when a child finds a white area on their skin.  All these kids come from the Leper colonies.  They know Leprosy first hand.  The first sign of the disease is a white patch on the skin.  It's  called dry leprosy.  When it moves to the wet stage it is too late.  So when a child comes in and asks us to look at a patch we take extra care especially to calm their mind. 
This was my job description thru the end of December.