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A Clean Hand   by Nurse Meng
I remember the first time I met Dolly: she was a shy Dong girl, and
seemed embarrassed to talk with me. She stood behind the other
little girls as they teased my two-year-old son. My husband was Dolly’s 5th grade English teacher, in a small village school in rural Guizhou province. Two days after classes started, my husband mentioned that something seemed wrong with Dolly’s hand. Being a nurse, I was interested in what the problem could be, and whether I could help.

After class, I waited at the door for Dolly. As soon as she came out, I patted her on the shoulder and said, “Dolly would you please come with me?” She hesitated, smiled and then walked over, calling to her friends to go on ahead. I squatted on the ground, Dong-style, so that I could have eye contact with Dolly, and asked her very

Picture
Dolly, the little Dong girl.

quietly, “May I see your hand— the one that is in your coat pocket?” Reluctantly she slowly withdrew her hand and revealed a very dirty and infected hand. Her fingers were swollen, the skin was peeling and turning black. Pus oozed out of cracks in her palm, and the redness was extending up her forearm. Right away I knew she had a severe skin infection. I asked her what happened. She had cut her finger accidentally with a knife, and never took the time to clean it. How long ago? At least 2 weeks. I asked her if she wanted me to help her make it better. She nodded, “Yes.”

The first thing I did was clean her hand and remove some of the dead skin. Next, I placed a clean bandage over the hand, and started her on antibiotics. Every day, for two weeks, Dolly would clean her hands in the morning, and then come to my home so I could put on a new bandage and to let her take her medicine. Every evening she would clean her hand again with warm salt water, with her grandmother’s help. Throughout her healing process, people in the village noticed how much better her hand looked. They were excited, and she was excited. Her grandmother told us she didn’t know what they would have done, and fed us a meal of sour fish and rice to thank us.

When the final day of taking antibiotics arrived, we took off her bandage for the last time—and there was a clean, healthy hand. A huge smile spread across her face, and she said, “Thank You!” Wasting no time, she ran off to show her friends. What pleased me most was that Dolly took a risk by trusting me with her health. From that time on, the people in the village felt freer to approach us with their health challenges, especially when the home remedies weren’t enough. But Dolly was the one who took the first step… a shy 11-year-old Dong girl.