Rhonda Deschner is a pediatrician with a soft-spoken manner and a quick smile. Rhonda practiced medicine in Texas for twenty years before heading off to Peru on Quechua Benefit’s November Medical Mission. Today the team is in Macusani, seven days into the trip, and a Quechua mother is swinging her two-year-old boy, named Chinto Zupauo Pacco, off her back and laying him lovingly on the exam table.
Victoria Paco Samhey is a young housewife whose husband drives a pedicab in Macusani. As Dr. Deschner’s exam begins, she asks Victoria about the baby’s symptoms. “He passes out, and then he cries,” she says. “I worry that he is dead for a moment—and he never sits up like my other child.” Rhonda tells the mother that the baby has an ear infection. Victoria is relieved to know that the baby will receive antibiotics, but her eyes begin to cloud with tears when she is told that the baby has cerebral palsy. The tears spill over when she learns that the baby will probably never walk on his own.
Rhonda quietly tells Victoria that she is a good mother—the baby is clean and well fed. She seems comforted when Rhonda shows her some basic exercises to strengthen the babies back and arms. She promises to work with little Chinto everyday to make him stronger. Dr. Deschner concludes her exam by sitting the baby upright and instructing his mother to prop him up as much as possible.
Rhonda asks the Peruvian nurse if children’s wheel chairs are available. “Not in Macusani, she says, not even in Juliaca.”
When Victoria leaves with a prescription for antibiotics in hand, Rhonda sadly confides that in the harsh cold of Macusani the baby will likely contract pneumonia and die. He is not strong enough to expel the mucus that will surely gather in his lungs.
If the baby were born in the United States, he likely would avoid the birth trauma that results in cerebral palsy. Even if the outcome was cerebral palsy, he could receive crucial therapy, along with a wheelchair appropriate for his small size, and braces that would enable him to walk on his own—but not here in Macusani.
Rhonda’s next patient, a twelve-year-old boy named Alex Samuel Davila Cola, has a more hopeful prognosis. He is one of three children born and raised in Macusani. Alex has a large cyst on his neck that is weeping mucus. It has been there as long as the boy can remember. Dr. Deschner diagnoses
thryroglossal duct cyst and says, “The boy needs to see an ear, nose, and throat specialist.” It could be tricky—the boy’s cyst may surround his thyroid gland, which could be damaged by surgery.
As Rhonda speaks softly to the mother, she is told that they took the boy to a specialist in Juliaca but the doctor said the boy needed an operation that could only be done in Arequipa. Rhonda quietly confirms the specialist’s diagnosis. The mother has never been to Arequipa, does not have bus fare to get there, or a place to stay if she makes it that far. Her face betrays her feelings of hopelessness.
Dr. Deschner, Dr Bailey, and Quechua Benefit’s Dr. Willy confer. Dr. Willy questions the mother and learns that the boy is a member of a social program that will pay for his treatment in Arequipa. Quechua Benefit quickly agrees to pay for the family’s travel to Arequipa as part of their special needs initiative. Dr. Willy and the mother make plans for Alex’s trip to Arequipa and leave together to collect the boy’s medical records from the local clinic.
Rhonda Deschner goes back to work, continuing her careful examinations, patient after patient. And patient after patient leave the clinic with a prescription to cure their ills and with gratitude for the slight, fair woman from the far away place called Texas who truly cares for their well being. She gives each one of them the gift of hope—which is every bit as powerful as medicine.
