I love it when people come into my room with certain body parts covered with a towel, a shirt, a scarf, a hat, or bush material - leaves or bamboo. Usually what is underneath is quite minor compared to the great lengths they have gone to hide whatever it might be. I just don't fully understand what they are trying to do by covering it up, if they think there is some healing power in it, or if it is totally because they are ashamed. I do know that there is some leaf that they think does have some sort of healing powers, but I don't really know what kind or if that is true. Recently, I had an older lady show up with her foot all wrapped up and with a leaf on top of one of her toes. I couldn't wait to see what was underneath. I found a toe pretty badly infected which had evidence of osteomyelitis on xray. I cleaned out the pus and gave her medicines to deal with the infection. We didn't rewrap her foot with the leaf but used roller bandages instead, hopefully that was ok.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
What is under the leaf?
I love it when people come into my room with certain body parts covered with a towel, a shirt, a scarf, a hat, or bush material - leaves or bamboo. Usually what is underneath is quite minor compared to the great lengths they have gone to hide whatever it might be. I just don't fully understand what they are trying to do by covering it up, if they think there is some healing power in it, or if it is totally because they are ashamed. I do know that there is some leaf that they think does have some sort of healing powers, but I don't really know what kind or if that is true. Recently, I had an older lady show up with her foot all wrapped up and with a leaf on top of one of her toes. I couldn't wait to see what was underneath. I found a toe pretty badly infected which had evidence of osteomyelitis on xray. I cleaned out the pus and gave her medicines to deal with the infection. We didn't rewrap her foot with the leaf but used roller bandages instead, hopefully that was ok.
