Sister Betty

June 13, 2008
I forgot to mention Sister Betty in the last epistle. In Huanca about 10 days ago, a mother asked us to make a home visit to examine her four-year-old son with cerebral palsy. The family is extremely poor and basically survives on community support. We walked down the hill through town with her, and met Sister Betty, an 80-something year-old Peruvian nun dressed in a neat gray habit, wearing sunglasses, and a baseball cap that said "Minnesota." She was delightful. She had no clue what or where Minnesota was, so I explained about lakes and forests, proximity to my home and my niece at the U. She said that she actually had two identical caps and offered me the other one.

Sister Betty knew the family well and helped us with the home visit. We passed through a tiny rock-enclosed dirt yard past three sheep and a couple of mangy chickens to enter the one-room windowless rock walled home. There were several kids, some piles of clothes, a couple beds and a small table, a bare bulb from the ceiling, no heat, no water, and the latrine somewhere out back. The small boy was micro-cephalic with spastic diplegia and had seizures from time to time, especially when he was ill. He was pretty malnourished and probably weighed a bit over 20 pounds, as he had trouble swallowing and could only take liquids, mostly just milk. He had seen a neurologist in Arequipa a couple years ago, but the family could never afford to fill the anti-convulsant prescription that had been given.

He wasn’t acutely ill when we saw him that day, and there simply aren’t many options for kids with these severe disabilities in a poor rural setting. The MMI Arequipa physical therapy project in August can fit him with a wheelchair to at least get him upright, and maybe offer a little more mobility but it won’t be easy to use in his home or the rocky little streets. We’ll also get him to the neurologist again, with Sister Betty’s help in getting them on a bus to come to the project. One long-term medicine option may be a small NGO called Med-to-One (www.med2one.org is anyone is interested in providing support). Basically, they find sponsors to donate a small amount monthly and then connect the dots for people to get chronic medical care and needed medicines, especially for illnesses like diabetes or epilepsy.

As I left Sister Betty, she gave me a big hug and the usual Peruvian right cheek kiss and headed up the hill to the clinic, walking hand-in-hand with the young American woman who had accompanied me.

I really liked Sister Betty.