Teen faces challenges

Debbie Blank

Editor’s Note: To get this story, Debbie Blank asked her questions, which were translated into Spanish by Dickey, who is fluent. Then the mother and daughter answered in Spanish, which was translated back into English by Dickey.



Miracle is a strong word – but maybe not too strong to describe the transformation of a Costa Rican teen now living in Batesville.

Through a series of encounters with caring strangers, over the last two years Paulette Barrantes-Villafranca, who recently turned 18, has battled back from two life-threatening illnesses.

According to Batesville resident Mary Dickey, “It's amazing she has lived as long as she has and now she has a real chance.”

After the student came down with meningitis, she contracted purpura fulminans, a rare bacterial infection. On Dec. 27, 2004, at a hospital in San José, the Central American country’s capital, she was given 72 hours to live.

The young woman was kept in isolation because her immune system was compromised so any illness could kill her and she could pass the infection to others. After antibiotics, she wasn’t contagious, but still at risk of dying.

Her doctor didn’t give the family much hope, but another doctor in secret told her mother, Josie Villafranca-Muñoz, about a medicine made in Holland too expensive for that hospital to stock and even offered the overseas phone number. The family had four treatments costing $1,200 sent across the ocean and soon the patient’s immune system improved.

But the purpura fulminans caused another dire complication. Her skin turned black, then had to be removed. That left open, burnlike, extremely painful wounds on 90 percent of her body, according to Dickey.

With no healthy skin to patch the open sores, a nurse told the mother about patches made by Ferris Corp., a California firm, that also were not available at the hospital. The family spent between $1,200 and $1,800 weekly on the patches, first using money from relatives and friends. When that was exhausted, they took out a bank loan and got funds Barrantes-Villafranca’s schoolmates had collected.

Her toes had to be amputated, then a physician thought of an innovative way to heal the soles of her feet. With the only normal skin on her buttocks, he cut a skin flap open there and attached the bottoms of her feet in the hopes skin could regenerate. Barrantes-Villafranca laid on her stomach with her legs painfully bent for two months during the most challenging time of her illness.

With the exception of two weeks, she remained hospitalized for nine months, then was at home with the expensive bandage changing for 15 months. (Four months before coming to the United States, Ferris Corp. began donating the patches.) They eventually healed her arms, but 70 percent of her body still had open wounds. The student hadn’t walked in two years.



Seeking assistance

“She had been so sick for so long,” Dickey recounted, that an American relative of the mother living in Costa Rica contacted a physician at a San José foundation, who brought Dr. Rae Schnuth, the assistant dean of clinical curriculum development at Michigan State University who was there with medical students to work with the underserved, to see this unusual case.

“Rae came back (to America) and started sending e-mails to people,” Dickey says, hoping to get supplies and a hospital bed created for burn victims, for which Hill-Rom is known, donated.

“One was to Janet Barber at Hill-Rom. Janet sent the e-mail to me because the company that I work for, Steo-Medical, Tampa, Fla., is Hill-Rom's exclusive distributor in Costa Rica.”

As the Batesville woman read the e-mail, her heart sank. The mother of two (Claire, 10, and Ian, 7) with husband Brad thought, “What if it was my child? How could I not help?”

Hill-Rom agreed to contribute a bed, but once Dickey viewed medical records and wound photos by e-mail, she decided Barrantes-Villafranca needed treatment in the U.S. Shriners hospitals for children in Tampa, Fla., and Galveston, Texas, were not equipped to handle the unusual illness. “I felt horrible because I had given them hope,” Dickey recalls.



Off to Shriners

She got on the Internet and went to a Shriners Web site, where she learned there was a hospital for burn victims in Cincinnati. “I had no idea.”

In November 2006, she left a message for the care coordinator. According to Dickey, “She called me back the next morning and asked for an application and medical records. The next day she said, ‘If you can get her here, we'll take her.’”

Dickey flew down to Costa Rica Jan. 3 and brought the youth to Cincinnati the next day with the help of air transportation donated by a private company.

The good news: “They have completely grafted all of her open wounds” using cadaver skin and her own skin during a series of five surgeries, four in January.

The bad news: Barrantes-Villafranca had no sensation in one foot, and a bone infection in the other. The infection had weakened the bones in her feet and lower legs so that she couldn’t walk and had to be contained before it spread throughout her body. A few weeks ago, her legs were amputated below the knees.

Her mother knows what would have happened if they had stayed in San José. “They would not have found out about the bone infection. Very possibly after two years of working so hard trying to survive, she would not have survived because of the bone infection.”

A bilingual Shriners nurse and Dickey, who learned Spanish during a one-year stay in Ecuador, became translators for the mother and daughter. The Batesville woman visited the hospital every two or three days, “to be a friend and do what I could to help.”

According to Dickey, the strawberry blonde girl “just never ceases to amaze me. She has the strength of no one I've ever known before. She's a fighter – she never gives up. She's got an incredible attitude and very good outlook and I think that anybody that she comes into contact with is touched by her. She's an inspiration to me and really, you know, even the nurses and doctors at Shriners, people were crying the day she left. She's just a very special person once you get to know her.”

Dickey’s family has been praying for the young woman each night since November. “We knew we needed to find a host family” for Barrantes-Villafranca, who will have to be monitored by Shriners Hospital for Children, Cincinnati, for the next year. As they grew to know her better, “We all just felt like we wanted to do it.” The teen came to live with them upon her March 2 hospital discharge. “It's been great,” Dickey reports.



Amazing network

She downplays her role in Barrantes-Villafranca’s treatment and recovery, saying there’s a "huge, amazing network of people who have been trying to help her."

Dickey marvels, “I got a check from a guy in California who nobody knows ... People in Batesville have heard about Paulette and Josie and called to say, ‘What can I do to help?’ I know what a great community Batesville is for helping other people. I felt like Batesville would be a great place for her to recover and get on her feet again – literally. It really has been that way.”



Down the road

What’s next? In about three weeks, Dickey will take the Costa Rican to a Shriners orthopedic hospital in Lexington, Ky., where casts will be made of her stumps, so prostheses can be created. Two weeks later, she will return there to learn to walk again.

Dickey is so excited. “I told her we will have a huge celebration that day. Maybe we'll go dancing.” Then the woman is hopeful Barrantes-Villafranca can go to high school here while she continues to improve.

As the trio tell this story in Dickey’s home March 6, they reflect on memories they will carry forward.

Dickey says, “I think I'll remember all the little milestones.” A Shriners physical therapist has been coaching the teen on exercises to regain her balance. “The other night ... she walked all around the room on her knees ... I see huge progress every day. I think I cry every day” – happy tears.

For the family, this has been a learning experience. “For my children, it's been a great lesson in compassion. For me, probably (I’ve learned) ‘Don't sweat the small stuff’ because it's made us appreciate everything we have and not to worry about things that don't matter.”

The amputee’s mother, speaking one day before she returned to Costa Rica, will remember two milestones: One fine day six weeks ago when her daughter felt no pain after so many months of suffering. “She said, ‘That was a very important day for me.’” The second date was Feb. 10, when Dickey brought the young woman home from the hospital for a day for her 18th birthday party. Her mom observes, “So many people without ever knowing her showed her so much love.”

Gratefulness was in the air. The Costa Rican mother told the American mother, “You and your family have been incredible, the most special people in the world. Without knowing us, you opened the doors to your house and your heart. If it wasn't for you, none of this ever would have happened.”

When asked to describe how she feels about the Dickeys’ support, Barrantes-Villafranca smiled. “I give them a lot of thanks because without even knowing me they have adopted me.”

Debbie Blank can be contacted at (812) 934-4343, Ext. 113; or debbie.blank@cnhimedia.com. To comment on stories, visit batesvilleheraldtribune.com.

Text Only