Saturday, July 07, 2007 Roperos: Girl scout in distress By Godofredo M. Roperos Politics Also
A TEENAGE girl is awaiting help at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) for a broken or dislocated arm she suffered when she joined a girl scout campout in Balamban in December last year. She is Miralene Generali, a grade six pupil of Barangay Nangka elementary school.
Miralene would have enrolled in first year in the Nangka national high school but for the swelling in her arm, which she thought was nothing until it grew big and bothered her in the past weeks.
A kin and close friend of her family, Christopher, who drives a V-hire bus and who brought her to the hospital early this week said that the doctors suspect that a tumor has developed in her injured arm.
Doctors do not know the extent of the damage but they are already talking of chemotherapy, a medical intervention Miralene’s family could ill-afford. A niece of Christopher’s wife, she was an active member of her school’s girl scout troop.
I am not quite clear how Miralene met the accident. But since she did not complain of extreme pain, her family must have taken her injury for granted.
Miralene went on with her daily routine until she graduated, so there was really no compelling reason to seek medical intervention for her. Then the arm swelled. Now it seems the injury has grown worse.
If it is true that Miralene has to undergo chemotherapy, the 13-year old girl genuinely needs help. Christopher told me last Wednesday that she was not getting the emergency attention she needed at the VSMMC, having been shuttled from one doctor to another.
I was tempted to ask the help of Rep. Raul del Mar but Miralene is from Cebu’s third district. Our new congressman, Pablo John Garcia, has hardly warmed his seat.
That VSMMC personnel did not given enough attention to Miralene might be true, but that is understandable considering the number of people needing medical attention there. The hospital is actually a depository of the province’s sick, most of them indigents.
Patients like Miralene need help from charitable individuals and organizations. She is too young to suffer such fate, what with the future all open to her to reach out, but for her unwarranted injury.
Hers is a case that offers an opportunity to those who have more to share with those who have less.
