Latest update April 17th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 14, 2014 News
Pekin, Illinois, US (pekintimes.com) — He takes long, hot showers, has developed a sweet tooth, calls his
American hosts “Mom” and “Dad,” wrestles with the boy who sleeps below him in their bunk beds and plays on a trampoline with the other children who live in their spacious home on Springfield’s south side.
Satchian Basdeo also has gained 45 pounds and has grown six inches in the almost nine months he has lived in Springfield.
Most important, Satchian, pronounced “SACH-yen,” can see and feel a completely sealed roof of his mouth, which allows him to eat, drink and talk like any other 11-year-old boy.
Satchian is talking much more these days in his Creole accent. He has become more outgoing. And though his speech isn’t perfect, it’s easier to understand him since the procedures at Memorial Medical Center in April and August to fix an unsuccessful cleft-palate repair that took place in his home country of Guyana.
With more procedures in his future, Satchian, who arrived in Springfield in February, said he is starting to miss his family in South America. But he is enjoying himself at the home of the American family that brought him here after meeting him during a church mission trip in a suburb of Georgetown, the Guyanese capital.
When asked if he was glad he came to Springfield for the life-altering surgeries, Satchian nodded several times. “It’s nice over here,” he said simply.
Kristen Ferguson, the Springfield Clinic doctor whom Satchian considers his adopted mother, estimated that the boy will have received $300,000 or more worth of donated services from Memorial and an array of local medical and dental professionals by the time his care is complete.
“There’s absolutely no way I could have afforded all of this,” said Ferguson, an emergency-medicine specialist who now treats occupational injuries. “A whole team of people has pitched in with Satchian and my journey.”
Ferguson met Satchian, then 10, when she was among about a dozen members of the Springfield First Church of the Nazarene who traveled to Guyana earlier this year to perform repairs at the Ruimveldt Children’s Aid Centre. The charity provides after-school educational enrichment and food, among other services, to low-income children in West Ruimveldt.
Ferguson, 39, who conducted health screenings while there, met Satchian and learned about the cleft-palate surgery that had been attempted on him two years earlier by a visiting Cuban doctor.
A cleft palate occurs when tissues in the roof of the mouth don’t grow together properly, leaving a gap and an opening into the nasal passages. The situation hampers a person’s ability to eat foods and make sounds. (AP)
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