ARTICLES

"One Day I Will Stand Up Again"

BRIGIDINE NUNS' HELPER PARALYZED

By Bob McPhail

Early on the morning of January 3, three young men helping to build a chapel and convent for the Brigidine sisters in Tijuana set out for San Quintin, about 200 miles to the south. Their foreman had asked them to finish off construction of a San Quintin home, work that would take a day or two, then return north to resume work on the convent and chapel.

Seven hours later, as they approached San Quintin in their beat-up pickup loaded down with rocks, the truck veered off the road and overturned. The driver and one passenger were crushed beneath the truck's load and died at the scene. Twenty-one-year-old Enrique Quintero Valenzuela was thrown from the wreckage.

The force of Enrique's fall knocked him unconscious. A group of American tourists driving by discovered the worker and took him to a San Quintin hospital. Doctors determined that his injuries were too serious to treat there, so a Red Cross ambulance took Enrique back to Tijuana, to the Social Security hospital in La Mesa.

That night Father Danilo Zannini, chaplain to the Brigidine Sisters, received a call from Enrique's boss and came to Enrique's bedside. "He was completely paralyzed," he said.

After two days Enrique was moved from intensive care to a ward. The Social Security doctor told Father Danilo, "The boy will be an invalid for the rest of his life." He said Enrique's spinal column was broken and that all they could do for him at the Social Security Hospital was put something in his spine to make him straight.

By now Enrique's mother and one of his nine brothers had arrived from their home in a mountain village in Sinaloa. His mother, a midwife, was not willing to accept the diagnosis. Nor was Father Danilo. Through the Brigidine sisters, they found an anesthesiologist who had been a benefactor to the nuns. The anesthesiologist told Father Danilo and Enrique's mother that he had a friend who was a neurosurgeon and that he would have the neurosurgeon examine Enrique.

After inspecting Enrique and his x-rays, the surgeon changed the young man's prognosis. He said the spinal column was not broken, only dislocated, impinging on the nerve-carrying spinal cord.

On January 13, Enrique's mother signed the forms to have her son removed from the Social Security hospital. The Brigidine sisters persuaded the nuns who operate Sacred Heart hospital to accept Enrique as a patient as if he were a member of the Brigidines. He would be charged only for room, board, and medicines. The anesthesiologist agreed to do his work for free. Although the neurosurgeon set a fee of more than $20,000, he said he was in no hurry to be paid.

On January 16, Enrique underwent nearly six hours of surgery. Before the operation, says Father Danilo, Enrique told him, "I'm not scared. God is great. One day I will stand up again." Within two days after the surgery, feeling began to return to Enrique's upper body. He was able to sit up in a chair. "The doctor said he responded very well to the surgery," says Father Danilo. By the time he was discharged from Sacred Heart Hospital on January 29, sensation had returned to Enrique's body as far down as his navel, according to Father Danilo.

Enrique is now living with a cousin in the unpaved Colonia Buenos Aires, near the eastern outskirts of Tijuana. Although he has his own room, a donated wheelchair, and adjustable hospital bed, the home is without running water. The doctors say Enrique needs physical therapy and specialized braces and plates. With adequate care, doctors told Father Danilo, Enrique may be able to stand again.

The Brigidine Sisters converted an old school bus into a makeshift motor home and donated it to Enrique's mother and brother to live in. They have moved the old bus to outside the home where Enrique is recovering. The family faces a 6500-peso debt to Sacred Heart Hospital (about $890), plus the $20,000 surgeon's fee. Father Danilo, who earns a salary of 1500 pesos a month (about $205), dipped into his savings for about $2000 to pay for some special plates and braces, money he says he had planned to use if an emergency required his return to Italy.

Father Danilo says he came to Tijuana several years ago while on vacation and met the Missionaries of Charity. He had spent six years as a young man in an Italian seminary, before he quit to become a diplomat to England and later an English teacher in Italian public schools. He says the Missionaries of Charity reawakened his vocation. He returned to Italy and to the seminary. He was ordained in his hometown of Brescia, Italy, on January 28, 1995, and incardinated in the diocese of Tijuana.

"This is a simple boy from Sinaloa," says Father Danilo of Enrique. "Very simple. Very nice. Of plain faith. He was one of the workers who would come to feast day masses we invited them to at the convent. The sisters love him, feel responsible for him.

"The doctor at the Social Security Hospital told Enrique before he told me that he would never walk again," says Father Danilo. "Enrique never mentioned it. Not to me. Not to his mother. Not his brother. When I talked to him about it, he said, 'These things happen to people, Father, not just me.'"

Father Danilo wants to make an appeal for money to pay medical bills and continue Enrique's treatment. "We can easily get passports and visas in this situation," says Father Danilo. "We would welcome any U.S. help available -- hospitals, special clinics, doctors. Anything." The doctors said Enrique can't afford to wait indefinitely before beginning a systematic recovery program because of the nature of his injury. *

Father Danilo can be reached by telephone in Tijuana at 011-52-66-86-88-93, or by mail at P.O. Box 430796, San Ysidro, CA 92143-0796.