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Smile Secret Sound: October

Monday 01 October

  • Putting a string of pearls down on a glass table
  • Somebody making popcorn
  • When you open a gazebo bag in the garage and the poles fall out
  • The disc of a grinder falling on a hard surface
  • Opening the lid of an old Milo tin and it wobbles
  • Putting a bunch of keys down on a counter

Tuesday 02 October

  • A R2 coin falling out of the machine when you pay for parking
  • The last water running out of a drain
  • Rolling tyres downhill and they fall over on a cement floor
  • Pulling open the tip of a plastic muffin container
  • Your change falling out of the machine when you pay at the Spar
  • A hard plastic tubing pipe falling and being pressed down

Wednesday 03 October

  • A polish tin lid falling on the floor
  • Opening a tin with a rotary can opener
  • An electric ice crusher
  • An office electronic paper shredder

Thursday 04 October

  • Pot lids rattling when opening a pot drawer
  • Putting a CD into a CD player and closing the lid
  • An old copy machine
  • When a clay pigeon leaves the device
  • Throwing a hoop over wooden blocks at the fun fair
  • A mobile jack under a car

Monday 08 October

  • A clay pigeon launcher
  • Throwing the dice when playing snakes and ladders
  • When playing Bingo and the number gets released
  • Dominoes falling over
  • A turnstile when you’re entering the supermarket
  • Slurping the last little bit of Coke from a tin

Tuesday 09 October

  • When you release the gas on an old soda-stream machine
  • Lifting the toilet lid banging it against the cistern
  • A canned fruit bottle’s lid that falls on a counter
  • A plastic board falling onto a surface
  • A lid being placed onto a pot
  • A smiley badge wobbling on a table

Wednesday 10 October

  • Change dispensed from a parking pay machine
  • Putting the lid on a Kenwood Chef machine
  • The ball inside a spray can
  • Target shooting on a canned fruit can
  • When your ring falls down the basin and lands in the elbow pipe
  • Pull starting an engine like on a lawnmower

Thursday 11 October

  • Releasing the money slot of a washing machine at the laundromat
  • Closing an a-frame aluminium step ladder
  • The ball of a Fuss-ball game falling through
  • Kick starting a ‘poegie’ and it doesn’t start
  • A plunger type sink plug that falls into place
  • Taking off and dropping the lid of your cappuccino

Monday 15 October

  • A shaker with a silver spiral ball inside
  • Pick-up sticks being put back inside the holder
  • A smaller pot’s lid falling into a larger pot
  • Tent poles banging together
  • Opening a Yale lock with a key
  • A stainless steel cup falling and bouncing
  • The remote-control motor of a garage door
  • The metal lever setting different heights on an ironing board
  • A rope ladder with wooden steps that is rolled out in the air
  • Loading gravel with a spade into a concrete mixer
  • An air hockey puck that drops into the opponent’s goal
  • Changing gears on a bicycle

Tuesday 16 October

  • When your tooth is pulled and the dentist throws it into a bowl
  • An oil lamp’s lantern glass tipping over
  • The sound of the spring on a steel dustbin lid
  • Dropping a coin into a blender
  • When you’re starting your car and the Bendix doesn’t kick in
  • A tennis racket falling on the ground
  • Boiled eggs rolling in a pot when tilting the pot
  • Unscrewing a Consol bottle’s lid
  • Sharpening a pencil in an electric pencil sharpener
  • Glow sticks being dropped back in their tin container
  • The metal ball spiral shaped whisk dropped in a plastic protein shaker
  • A metal baseball bat falling on dusty ground
  • A den-den daiko
  • Putting a plate in the microwave oven
  • A golf ball falling into the putting hole on the 18th
  • A dog dropping its empty food bowl from its mouth
  • Three tins stacked on each other and thrown over by a tennis ball
  • Putting the round silver flusher back in the cistern after filling it with grey water

Wednesday 17 October

  • An enamel bowl being dropped on a granite counter
  • A dustbin in a mall with a swinging lid
  • Putting a R10 note into a tokens machine at the arcade and the tokens fall out
  • The lotto ball dropping out of the lotto machine
  • A cordless kettle being put back onto its base
  • Locking your steering by pulling the thief lock out to fit the steering wheel
  • A wooden percussion frog
  • Lifting the lid of a man-hole and dropping it on cement
  • Pool balls dropping on a coin operated pool table
  • A plastic plate falling on a hard surface
  • A weight being removed from a scale
  • The inside of a cowbell being rattled by a wooden stick
  • A roadworks machine pounding down the tar
  • The sound an elevator makes when it stops
  • Turning the final turn on a numbers lock
  • Putting a teaspoon into an empty small yoghurt holder
  • A disposable razor falling into the basin while shaving
  • The noise made by tins dragging behind a bridal car

 

BRAVE GIRL HAS A LESSON FOR US ALL

Children are by far braver than adults, this is a fact. None braver than little Angelique Schroder from Pietermaritzburg. After being born without a left hand, and with most of her fingers missing on the right hand, the 4 year old has just become one of the youngest patients in South Africa to undergo a successful microvascular foot to hand transfer. In layman’s terms: her toe is now a functioning digit on her hand.

The story of her journey is one of courage and determination. The day she was born came as a shock to both her parents and the doctors, who didn’t pick up any clues in the womb about the congenital condition affecting her limb. As far as the doctors were concerned, Dirk and Anna could expect a 100% healthy, normal baby girl.

Her father Dirk says one of the doctors couldn’t even come back into the delivery room, so big was the shock. The delivery room went silent. After the initial trauma, Dirk says they sprang into action.

They started googling what could be done, and Dirk’s father contacted a plastic surgeon friend in the USA. The American doctor contacted the Red Cross in the States, who in turn contacted the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s hospital in Cape Town.

It was Dr. Mark van der Velde that first gave the family hope, and today he is their hero.

Angelique’s first surgery was when she was just 6 months old. It was to augment her right middle and ring fingers. At just over 1 year of age Dr van der Velde performed a third bone graft to then lengthen her thumb. All of these small bone grafts helped to lengthen the little she had and gave her a very basic fine pinch grasp.

The recent operation was painstakingly planned by Dr van der Velde. During the 11 hour operation using 4 surgeons, the team successfully built a pinkie finger for Angelique from one of her toes.

Dirk says his daughter was at first nervous after the operation at seeing the bandages on both her foot and hand, but now she is loving the new addition, and he says she is excited by the fact that she now has a finger nail to paint.

ang2

In the next few months she will work with occupational therapists and should start moving the finger and grasping large objects between the new reconstruction and her bone lengthened thumb.

Dirk is realistic about Angelique’s path ahead.

“She has constantly amazed us, doing things that we can’t even do with one hand. She’s determined and excited, but we have a lot of hurdles to cross over the next few years.”

Dirk has expressed his extreme gratitude for Dr van der Velde and the doctors at Red Cross, and he’s also hoping this surgery will give other families, whose children have similar conditions, hope.

He says with technology changing so rapidly, there is the possibility that Angelique might be fitted with a robotic left hand, once she becomes a teenager. And the missing toe, which is now her pinkie finger, has not phased Angelique in the least.

“She’s jumping, running, walking, she even does ballet, and it hasn’t stopped her at all.”

If Angelique’s determination is anything to go by, nothing is going to ever stand in her way. A lesson for many adults, I would say.

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