BRINGING PATIENTS TO THE UNITED STATES

UHH has been able to bring several patients from Rosita to the United States for treatment of their illnesses. The first to come was Meyling Onsang Peralta. Dr. John Lent first saw Meyling as a patient in 2004. She was ill at the time from a calcified aortic valve. In 2005, Dr. Lent saw her again, and she was in total heart failure needing emergency treatment. She came to Fond du Lac in February and had her aortic value replaced at St. Agnes Hospital. All services including treatment were donated. She returned to Rosita in May of that year and is now very healthy. Meyling and her husband own a restaurant in Rosita, and the UHH Medical/Dental team eats all meals there which Meyling enthusiastically cooks. An eight-year-old girl, Maria Elena, came to Milwaukee in 2005. She is partially blind and has no eyelids. A group called Healing the Children sponsored Marias trip and surgery. She had plastic surgery on her eye lids with some success but will need more surgery as she continues to mature. After surgery, she returned to Rosita and lives with her parents. Keydi Cortez was an 18-year-old girl with a congenital heart defect. As an infant, she had some surgery in Cuba. During her teenage years, she showed severe symptoms of cardiac insufficiency: extreme shortness of breath and clubbing of her fingers. Dr. John Lent worked with a social worker in New York, Maria Corbo, who arranged for Keydi to have surgery at NYU in New York. It was very successful and Keydi is now a college student in Managua.

Meyling Onsang Peralta and her husband Chico

Keidi Mariel Cortez Flores