Children’s Hospital International Services

The following was submitted by Leslie Hast, News and Public Affairs intern 

When Joseline first rounded the corner, I was fixated on her face—big rosy cheeks and wide, bright eyes. The stuffed dog that she was clutching hid the reason she was at the hospital today—a neck tumor that is practically the size of her head. As Joseline lowered the dog to her lap, I realized that she wasn’t tilting her head to the side to be cute or because she was tired. The weight of the huge tumor forced that tilt. As we waited to be let into the waiting room, Joseline and I were mesmerized by each other. She was staring at my bright blue shirt, while I was transfixed on the contrast between her beautiful round face and the bulging tumor beside it.

Once we got to the waiting room, Joseline was used to all the new faces surrounding her, and she got back to doing what two-year-olds do best—playing.  She had named her stuffed dog Coquetta after the dog she has back home in Guatemala, and with a still camera and video camera poised on her, she carefully strapped Coquetta into her new green stroller. Though Joseline doesn’t say much, she is definitely not camera shy.

She’s also a girl who knows what she wants. We parked her stroller outside the exam room so it wouldn’t be as crowded, but Joseline hopped off her mom’s lap, stomped out into the hallway and wheeled the stroller back in the room all by herself.

The mass on Joseline’s neck is a lymphatic malformation. It is not cancer, but it does hinder her ability to breathe, eat and move her neck. Steven Goudy, M.D., assistant professor of Otolaryngology, said it was filled with fluid and compared it to a water balloon.

Goudy was part of the team that first met Joseline in November 2006 when they travelled to Guatemala to provide surgery for children with head and neck masses, ear/nose/throat conditions and cleft lips and palates. The trip was in partnership with The Shalom Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides medical care, education and nutrition to children living in poverty in Guatemala.

Joseline was just 6 months old at this time, and her mother, Veronica Santay, wanted to try more conservative treatments first, but when the team returned in December 2007, the mass was still growing. The surgery would require better equipment than what was available in Guatemala, so The Shalom Foundation paid for Joseline and her mother to travel to the United States. The Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt and her doctors are donating the surgery and treatments.

But Joseline is just one child among many that this partnership has helped. On the December 2007 trip, a team of 18 doctors evaluated 72 and performed a record 41 surgeries in one week.  I can’t even imagine how hectic and tiring that week must have been!

Now they are preparing for similar success with Joseline. She has already undergone many evaluations and will have more procedures Wednesday morning. The doctors will use scopes to take an exploratory look at the invisible part of Joseline’s tumor—the part inside her chest cavity. They will evaluate her airway to see if her lungs or trachea are compressed, and they will decide how much of the tumor to remove. The major surgery to remove the tumor is scheduled for July 8.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Joseline from Guatemala. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.