Daniel's Story

The tiny form in the hospital bed appeared to have arrived from an African famine rather than an Andean mountain. Never have I seen a child so skeletal and mal-nourished and never have I been so surprised to see a child so sick, live. Daniel’s distressed Quechua mother really spoke only Quechua, with just a little Spanish so from the start it was clear that communicating was going to be difficult. With a little help from the mother of the boy in the adjacent bed, I learned that Daniel, nearly three, had fallen from a horse and suffered a severe head injury leaving him paralysed, all his muscles contracted, stiff as a board and with just a little movement of his head, eyes and mouth. The poor little mite didn’t look as though he’d last another day to be honest, but I went downstairs to the room in the Burns Unit where we store our toys and clothes and found him a little jumper, more to try and show some kindness to his mother than anything.

A couple of days later. to my surprise, Daniel was still there. He didn’t look any better, and his mum was still very distressed. I still hadn’t got a clue how to help. I started to get to know the mum of the boy alongside and learned that Daniel’s mum had five children, but two had already died and she had a 9 year old at home with cerebral palsy. She had a Quechua Bible with her that she couldn’t read, but was a Christian and had a church she belonged to in her community. Over the next few weeks, Jenny O and I visited Daniel, and Jenny, with her OT background, had a few ideas to help him – some alpaca fleece between his knees to stop pressure sores, the beginnings of stretching his little clenched hands and arms, a musical toy. 

His mum left at one point to go back to her other child, so that week Jenny went in every day. That week he seemed to have a respiratory infection and we thought that would be the end for him, but he surprisingly fought it off and recovered. He seemed to be losing weight rather than gaining it, although his weight chart was going up and down between 7 and 9 kg rather randomly – we’re  not sure they were actually weighing him! One week I came across a visiting American doctor downstairs and asked him to have a quick assessment of Daniel. He said the injury was extremely bad, but it was too early to give up hope of any sort of recovery. It was an interesting exercise in three-way translation as I went from English to Spanish, and the grandpa of the girl in the next bed translated from Spanish to Quechua!

Daniel’s mum was starting to give up hope of being able to care for Daniel back in her community, so the hospital started to look for a children’s home place for him. However, the local home that is best for rehabilitation said they weren’t interested in him because he wouldn’t improve. And then all the other places that might have taken him were either full or said his needs were too great for them to handle. At this point we were afraid Daniel’s mum might just disappear and leave him - which would have been the worst thing for Daniel as, apart from being abandoned, he would have been stuck in the hospital for weeks, possibly months, while they waited for a place to be available. Thankfully Mum stayed, and came round to the idea that maybe she could take Daniel home after all. By this time Jenny had convinced her that she could pick him up, and he did seem to be pleased to be in his mum’s arms rather than stuck in his bed full-time. Robyn had also ventured back into the ward (she’d been thrown out a few weeks before basically for being too helpful, i.e.’ interfering’!) to help us with Daniel. 

Finally a relative of Daniel’s dad arrived who it seemed was able to accompany them back to their community, if we could help with the bus fares. This we were pleased to do as we had been trying to find someone who could do the 12 hour plus journey with them but to no avail. Robyn helped them get a letter from the hospital to the nearest community clinic (which I think is still several hours walk from where they live) – we hope the staff there will give some sort of help. And I wrote a letter to their church, trying to encourage them to support Daniel’s family – not sure if that will have helped, but there is so much superstition in the countryside about kids with disabilities being cursed that I thought a letter might be better than nothing.

We don’t expect to see Daniel again in Cusco. We hope and pray that his family love him and care for him as best they can, and that they will remember the advice given to his mum about feeding him, turning him and doing some gentle exercises with him. At least we were happy to see Daniel stay with his mum instead of becoming yet another abandoned child left to whichever overcrowded children’s home that would take him.

What would be great is to have some type of outreach worker who could support mums like this who, with help, could keep their children and learn how to care for them. The biggest obstacle to this is literally an obstacle, or rather quite a few obstacles – 4000m+ high mountains and treacherous unpaved roads! But not all the kids come from places as inaccessible as Daniel, so perhaps there is some mileage in the idea. The best solution for these children cannot be to leave them amongst total strangers in an institution.  It would be fantastic to contribute to reducing the constant flow of abandoned children!