15. Street Doctor

Stab wounds, security-dog bites, burns, scars from police brutality, gashes from flying objects (such as bricks or metal stakes), sliced bottoms of feet from stepping on broken glass, chipped and rotten teeth. Injuries are VERY common with the street kids.
These listed above are just some of the more common ones. The story of ten year old Jason is just one example of how the kids damage themselves. Apparently he ‘ran his head into a flying metal stake’ thrown by a friend. He swears that it was only an accident and that the other kid didn’t mean to do it.
Like I said, these injuries are quite common and I have seen my share of them! One thing that has amazed me is that, one way or another, the kids always seem to make it to a government hospital or clinic where the treatment is free, whether they are taken by a friend or just manage to get there by themselves.
The other common thing that happens is the kid’s lack of follow up. They will go and get treatment, but then not necessarily follow through with it and sometimes their wounds end up in worse shape than when they started.
With Jason, he went the first time, and sat in the waiting room for a very long time and got impatient and left. Then realizing the next day that he should have stayed, he returned. Because
it had been over 24 hours since the accident had occurred they could no longer stitch it up for fear of it becoming an abscess. So instead, he was supposed to get it cleaned out every day and then return in one week to get it properly stitched.
However, when he asked me for help the only part that he remembered was that he had to go back in one week’s time to get it stitched. He totally forgot, or didn’t even understand from the beginning, that he had to go every day to get it cleaned.
When I took him to the doctor they informed me that he was supposed to have come every day and that they could no longer stitch it up. I then just had to take him to get it cleaned out every day for more than a month, until his wound healed.
I had another great example of this during that same month. At that point I had been living in Cape Town for about a year. Another boy, Donnie, probably around the same age as Jason also had trouble following up with his injury. He had been beaten up by the cops and had gone to the doctor where they gave him stitches for one of the cuts over his eye.
This had happened over a month ago and he had never returned to get the stitches removed. So one day while I was talking to him and a few other boys, I noticed that the wound had healed as much as it could but was starting to get scabby and red because the stitches should have been removed a long time ago.
He complained that he wanted them out and I joked with him saying that I would pull them out, as I joke when they complain about sore teeth. Usually they say, “No way!!” or something to that effect and the thought of me trying to “fix them up” is enough to make them want to go to the doctor or dentist.
In this case, it didn’t seem to work that way. Donnie was so annoyed with the stitches and so ready for them to come out that he said, “Ok!” and he pushed his face closer to me as if he was ready for me to just take the stitches out right then and there.
I decided to play along with it for a second and pulled out the scissors of my Swiss army knife to kind of scare him away from the idea of me taking out his stitches. I lunged the scissors towards his face in a cutting motion, hoping he would back down.
To my surprise, he closed his eye and pushed his face closer to my hand and assumed the “ready position”. I felt that I had taken it so far that by not taking out his stitches I would be letting him down so... OK, I had never removed stitches before, but I did watch very carefully as my doctor removed the stitches in my arm the summer I cut myself with hedge clippers, so at least I wasn’t going into it totally “uneducated”.
I just said a quick prayer in my head and started snipping. I successfully removed all the stitches, without hurting him I might add.
After I finished, it really was a huge reward to see his face and to hear him thank me over and over again. He seemed a bit shocked. The funny thing is that he wasn’t shocked that I actually “knew” how to remove stitches, but it was more because I DID remove them, right there on the street for him. It really meant a lot to him and it is certainly another situation that I will never forget!!
His wound is totally healed and there isn’t even a scar. Since that first experience my little Swiss army knife, that was a gift from a good friend, has come in handy over and over again. I have removed hundreds of stitches. The most I have ever removed in one sitting was with a boy that had fallen out of a train. He had cuts and gashes ALL over his body. I lost count that day at around thirty stitches!