Box #15

I am taken back to a small shack of a house in the Dominican Republic.  I walk in, led by a woman looking much older than her years.  She spoke only Spanish and I struggled to remember the last four years of my schooling in the language.  She led me back to a room, one of the only rooms in the house, where I saw an old man of ninety years laying on a dirty bed wheezing with every breath.  As I continued to strain to understand her quickly spoken Spanish, I heard her tell me that this man was her father, and he had been sick for many years with chronic bronchitis and was paralyzed on the right side of his body.  My job was to help her bathe him.  We donned rubber gloves and uncovered his frail body from the sheet that lay over him, which unveiled the many open sores that plagued his body.  He stench of the room become stronger and my head began to feel light.  We bathed him gently with wet cloths and when we finished, dressed his wounds as best we could.  The sights, sounds, and smells of that house and that room will stay with me forever.