We have an exciting update on the status of one of the patients we saw while in Guatemala last year. Juana Perez is a beautiful nine year-old girl with a big problem. She was born with severe bilateral clubbed feet. Her mother and sister took turns carrying her for the 3 1/2 hour walk over unpaved roads to our clinic in Tontoles. Aside from her feet, Juana is a healthy child.
We provided her with a walker and a wheelchair to help improve her mobility, but she wouldn't be able to walk normally without surgery. Our team of caregivers, led by Mary Carol Todd, set to work finding an orthopedic pediatric surgeon who could take on her case.
Providence began to set in when Dr. Allen Hooper, an emergency room physician from St. John's Regional Medical Center who accompanied us on this mission trip, spoke to a reporter at the Ventura County Star about Juana's case. A story about the mission, and Juana, appeared in the Christmas Eve edition of the Star.
That story was serendipitously read by Heather Frankle, the international service director of the Rotary Club of Simi Sunrise, who was planning to accompany a group of volunteer surgeons to Honduras (which borders Guatemala) in January 2009 specifically to perform corrective surgery for children with clubfoot!
With the help of the Simi Rotary, our Guatemalan contacts, and the two college students from St. John's University who are volunteering in Esquipulas for nine months, we were able to secure passports for Juana and her mother and transport them to Honduras for Juana's surgery. Read more about the surgery here. And here's a picture of Juana now:
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG LADY- PRAYING FOR A SPEEDY RECOVERY. JUANA PEREZ HAS ONE BRAVE SPIRIT. :)
Posted by: STEPHANIE HERRERA | September 18, 2009 at 11:08 AM