The Wonders of Charcoal

Earlier this week, after Typhoon Juan had come through, Michiel and Sam took the motorcycle out into the villages to look for a little boy who had an infected leg. About a week earlier a man had shown us pictures of the little boys leg.

Richards leg. November 2009

He said that it was infected badly and he needed help. We showed the pictures to a local Doctor and he said that the boy would need an x-ray.

These are the pictures we
received from the man.
After seeing them we knew
we needed to find this poor
boy.

Well yesterday we went looking for him. We drove to his village and finally we caught up with the boy at school. Turns out Richard, the boy we were looking for, has been doing all the things a 12 year old boy does except this whole year he's had to do it with a greatly swollen, severly infected leg. After getting some anitibotics at the Project, we rode the motorcycle back to where the boy lives and found his mother so we could convince her to bring the boy to the hospital on Friday, and also explain to her about him taking the antibotic and how to do charcoal poltices. ****side note: Charcoal is a wonder healer..and is also Very accessible to any person in the philippines (they need it to cook their food)****

Richards leg: October 2010

See the size difference in his legs? Poor baby....

Anyways...while we were there we met Richard's brother, Nomark, and we noticed his left foot was really swollen. Michiel said it was from stepping in Caribou pee or something like that. The poor boys' foot was so swollen his toes were spread apart from each other. It was red and around his pinky toe it was so swollen it was blackish. We decided, instead of telling the mother how to do a charcoal politice, we'd show her how to do one.

We told her how to smash the charcoal and to sift it and mix it with water and get it all paste like. Then we placed it on his foot. His foot had no open wounds, but as soon as the charcoal was placed on his foot some pus already started draining. I can't believe how fast charcoal works. It's a gift from God. Here is a video of it:

We used a coconut shell for a bowl to
mix our charcoal.

Oh....the wonders of charcoal astound me. So we left the mother in hopes that she will continue to make sure both of her sons are doing their charcoal treatments every day.

His leg has already gone
down in size.

     Finally, Friday came, Sam was excited to see how, 12 year old, Richard's leg would be doing. We met Richard and his mother at the hospital and took them back to the apartment. At glance you could tell his leg looked less swollen but, also it looked a little cleaner and healthier too. No pus was draining out, like before. His mother has been very diligent about doing the charcoal poltices on both of her son's infections before going to bed each night.

Sam and Jam clean the wound.

So Jam (a fellow nurse) and Sam cleaned Richard's leg with some alcohol and betadine and wrapped it up nicely. We didn't do an x-ray like we had planned, because we felt there was no point for one (We knew his leg wasn't broken). We prayed with Richard and his mother and sent them home where hopefully he will continue his charcoal treatments and his antibiotics. We shall go see them sometime this week. It is so wonderful, how God answers prayers. He is the best Healer. :) Till next time...

~Me and Her