Access

Gloria’s son Luis, fifteen, was born with what we think is a club foot. He’s had four surgeries in the public health system – the one to which his poor family has access. The early ones left him able to walk, albeit with a deformed foot and badly withered leg.  The latest was a disaster. For the first time, he was left with a 2 centimeter difference between the good leg and the bad leg, throwing his whole muscular-skeletal system out of whack as he tried to navigate.

Luis

As far as we can piece together the history, Luis had surgery in May 2009. Crutches were prescribed, but his family couldn’t afford them. Physical therapy was also prescribed, three days a week, in Panama City. He lives in Rio Hato, some 90 minutes and a $6 round trip bus fare away. When other renters are at the villa, his mother Gloria is required to stay 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. His father works an hour away and can’t get time off either.

So Luis hopped around on his good foot, surely putting the surgically repaired foot down now and again. In August he complained of pain, and an x-ray determined he’d fractured a bone in the bad foot. His leg was then casted. He continued hopping around – including hopping to the road from his house, catching a chiva to Penonome for summer school to make up the class he missed while in the hospital, returning to the village after class and hopping back to his house. He finally got crutches in January, when I arrived and bought them.

On his most recent visit to the clinic in Panama, the doctor he sees was too rushed – after Luis and Gloria had left the village by bus at 3am in order to arrive early for their appointment – to remove the cast and do another Xray. The doctor simply felt the cast, pronounced it intact, and brusquely told Gloria and Luis to come back in two weeks.

My guests last week, Phyllis and Marilyn, are both nurses. They urged me to work with them to try to get Luis some better care, either here or in the U.S. As part of that, we coached Gloria to ask Luis’ doctor if he would write a summary of what care had been given over the years so that we could get a second opinion.

The doctor was furious, declared he hadn’t made a mistake with the surgery to create the 2 centimeter difference, said he wouldn’t write anything, and told Gloria that she could take her son anywhere but that he, the clinic doctor, would no longer treat Luis if she did.

I contacted a wealthy client of mine here in Panama, and he has agreed to gain us access to the best orthopedic practice in the city. I will pay for the consultation. We’ll have some hard decisions to make after that, as the full cost of whatever repair might be done is likely beyond me, and Gloria has no way to pay for care in the private system. And, her public system doctor is in a snit and may refuse to treat Luis in the future.

Gloria tells me that her faith in God is what sustains her. She says that in her darkest hours, God always sends a ray of light, and right now I am God’s light in her soul.

I’m deeply agnostic and have been for decades … yet how can I not accept and affirm her belief that God intervenes to lessen the harshness of her life? She smiles, and encircles me in a hug.

Tags: global culture