Lulahana: While out playing one day, seven-year-old Lulahana was hit in the face with a rock, leaving her blind in her left eye . . .
|
Daisy
|
|
|
|
Meet Daisy, one of Micronesia's needy children. In September, 2001, a Canvasback orthopedic survey team found the five-year-old at the Pohnpei hospital in traction with the fourth broken leg of her young life. Daisy has osteogenesis imperfecta, and incurable genetic condition that affects collagen in the body's connective tissue. As a result, Daisy is tiny for her age, with bowed limbs and fragile bones. The team felt a special empathy for Daisy, but there was nothing they could do to treat her. (The specialists at Shriner's Hospital in Hawaii have agreed to help with the management of Daisy's condition when she's a few years older.) Lauren was especially touched by Daisy's plight, and vowed to do something to make her life better. |
|
When Lauren returned to Pohnpei with a Canvasback E.N.T. team in January, she sent word for Daisy to be brought in to the hospital. A week passed with no sign of the little girl. Finally, on the last day of clinic, Daisy's father appeared and told Lauren that Daisy had broken her leg yet again, so he had left her at home. Lauren just couldn't leave without seeing Daisy, so she and the father jumped into a borrowed car and drove through the pouring rain to the other end of the island, nearly an hour away. |
|
|
The rain stopped just as they got out of the car, but there was no house, only jungle for as far as the eye could see. Daisy's father started down a slippery mud path toting an armload of presents that Lauren had collected over the holidays from caring friends and church members back at her home in Canada. Twenty minutes later, they came to a clearing in which stood a plywood platform with a rusted tin roof that was home to Daisy, her parents and her four siblings. |
|
|
Daisy's father (right)
carries her |
|
|
|
|
|
When Daisy saw the presents, her eyes lit up! She had never seen anything so wondrous in her life! Watching Daisy as she sat on the plank floor opening the gifts, Lauren had another idea. Daisy could not walk on her weak little legs, so her mother or father had to carry her everywhere. What if she were able to get a pair of child's crutches or a tiny walker? Then Daisy could get around by herself and strengthen her legs in the process. |
|
|
Back at mission headquarters in California, Lauren searched for a walking aid small enough to fit Daisy's tiny frame. Finally, she met a family at church whose young daughter had a tiny walker that she had outgrown. They were more than happy to give it to Daisy. On her next mission to the islands in Septemaber, 2002, Lauren took the walker to Daisy and watched again the wonder in a child's eyes and the gratitude on a parents' face as they received this gift of mobility in Jesus' name. Although Daisy was too weak to use the walker just yet, the doctors encouraged her to practice with it and work on strengthening her feeble legs.
On the same
trip, Canvasback physician George Wiesseman examined |
|
|
Daisy was delighted with
her gifts, and said she couldn't wait to share them with her siblings. |
|
|
The Shriners have since read his recommendation and agreed to take Daisy on an urgent basis. So on June 9, Daisy and her father will arrive in Honolulu for surgery to implant a rod in her leg so that one day she will be able to walk.
|
|
