Today Gennadiy brought in the doctor again. The doctor spent a couple of hours examining the residents again, and identified three men and three women who appear to have pneumonia or similar serious conditions. He prescribed antibiotic injections for each of them, in addition to tablets. Most of the other residents are also taking antibiotic tablets too. Surprisingly to me (but of course I’m not a doctor), several of the typically stronger residents have caught pneumonia. For example Evon, notwithstanding that he actually seems stronger than he did a few days ago. He’s getting out of bed and walking into the residential activity hall for meals just as he did before he got sick, and generally appears quite normal. I am hopeful the antibiotics will continue to be effective against the infections and everyone will be back in normal health again soon.
A couple of the residents here are actually quite young. I mentioned Natali, the 43 year old woman with cerebral palsy in my recent post about visiting the dentist. Another resident, Maria, is in her early 30s. She has complex mental disability that appears to be part autism and part schizophrenia. She needs to take medication three times per day to control wild mood swings. But most of the time while she is on her medication she is gentle, calm and cooperative.
Today after breakfast I noticed her sitting alone at a table in the activity hall. Her eyes were closed, her head was tilted slightly forward and her hands were clasped in her lap. She looked almost as if she was praying or meditating.
When I saw her sitting there at the table all by herself I suddenly remembered the coloring books and felt tipped markers I had brought from Khmelnytsky. I had brought them for the local kids that sometimes visit the nursing home, but suddenly it dawned on me that Maria also seems to have the psyche of about a 4 or 5 year old child, even though she’s an adult. Would she enjoy those coloring books the same way a true 4-year old does? I quickly finished the small errand I was doing and hurried upstairs to get a coloring book and set of pens. I wanted to offer them to Maria before she left her seat at that table.
When I approached the table, I found her eyes were still closed, and she actually appeared to be asleep. I opened the book to a page with a picture of a cute rabbit and went away, leaving the open book and the pens on the table in front of her.
A little while later, I noticed Alexander giving Maria her midday medication. I stepped over right after he finished. She was still sitting there with her eyes closed as if she were asleep. But this time I was pretty sure she was awake, so I addressed her. She opened her eyes suddenly and looked at me with a mildly startled expression. I pointed to the open page in the coloring book. She looked down blankly at the page. I took a blue pen out of the case and began coloring one of the rabbits ears. Then I handed her a violet colored pen. She looked very surprised, but she took the pen and pointed at the rabbit’s other ear. I nodded my head vigorously, and she immediately began coloring in the rabbit’s ear. She was quick and accurate and careful not to color outside of the lines. As soon as she finished coloring in the ear, she set the pen down and sat admiring her handiwork with a big smile on her face. I thought that was amazing, but I wanted to see more. So I took another pen and started coloring in one of the rabbit’s eyes. She pointed at the other eye right away, so I handed her the pen. She immediately colored in both eyes, and when it was finished, she set the pen down.

We proceeded: I would point to another blank part of the picture and then offer her several pens; she would pick a color and then very accurately fill in the empty space. A couple of times I stepped away to do errands, and each time I came back she was sitting there, the area she had been working on when I left neatly filled in and the capped pen sitting on the table. We completed almost the entire picture like that before lunch, and it was a lot of fun.
If any psychology students are reading this blog and are interested in spending a summer or a semester doing volunteer work in Ukraine with patients like Maria, please feel free to take a look at the RAYA community page.