Karaikal, India: Friday, January 30

There’s a buzz up and down the wards of Vinayaka Hospital as the sun rises over the Bay of Bengal. Today is the last day of surgery and all four ORs are busy. Tomorrow the Rotaplast team examines the one-hundred-plus patients who have received reconstructive facial surgery; most will check out and go home to new lives.

All except one. For the past week, I’ve seen him hanging around the hospital - the boy with his head pulled down low, his collar yanked up to cover his horrific burn scars. He’s been haunting everyone’s thoughts. He’d been told, finally, that nothing that could be done for him. Without proper equipment and enough time for multiple surgeries and aftercare, the Rotaplast team had to say no.

But today the answer is maybe. Efforts are underway to fly fourteen-year-old Rajkumar Kannappan to the United States for surgery in a Bay Area burn unit. But it’s a big maybe, says Rotaplast nurse Paula Fillari. Things like visas and passports and permissions have to be worked out on both sides of the world. Money’s an issue, too. Team Director Paul Fisher is working on it along with the local Karaikal Rotarians.

Rajkumar’s dad, G. Kannappan, says he’s up for the trip if it’ll help his son. Dad is a goldsmith with his own small shop in the town of Peralum, about 22 km from Karaikal, doing work-to-order as well as his own designs. He’s not poor, relatively speaking, but not well off either. He certainly doesn’t have the lakhs (100,000) of rupees to buy the kind of medical care his son needs to live a normal life. In fact, he’s tapped out after borrowing to pay for services at a private clinic.

Life turned upside down for them one night three years ago while Rajkumar was staying at his 83–year old grandmother’s house, not far from his parents place. He often stayed with grandma; he was her pet. At about 5:00 am (the details are hazy here) a lit kerosene lantern somehow toppled onto Rajkumar. Grandma’s screams brought out the neighbors who did the only thing they knew how – they poured water on the kid. The worst thing possible.

The water sloshed the flaming kerosene around, searing the skin off the boy’s chest, arms, neck and chin. The parents were summoned and – after an unimaginable ordeal over 22 km of road – the boy arrived at Karaikal General Hospital at around 8:00 am. He remained hospitalized for fifteen days. But the damage was done. Skin grafts from his face to cover the hole burned in his belly, as well as massive scar tissue, left the lower part of his faces was fused to his chest.

Before the accident, the 7th grader liked to play cricket, enjoyed dancing and was a good student at school with a talent for electronics. Since the accident, he dropped out of school. Afraid to show his terrible scars, he stayed at home and hid when visitors – even relatives – came to the house. Sometimes his father takes him to the shop, where helps out on small jobs, just to give the boy something to do. If someone should look, he pulls his shirt collar up or wears a shawl – to spare people the sight of his ugliness, or to hide it out of shame?

Either way, this kid needs a break. There’s a button on the upper left hand side of this page that says, “Make a Donation.” It’s tax deductible.

The money raised by Rotaplast’s president Anita Stangl and ambassadors, such as Ursula Blasej, from supporting Rotary clubs and other groups has gone a long way to making a difference in this little town by the Bay of Bengal. The most immediate results are in the faces of the kids buzzing up and down the wards.

ROTAPLAST SCORECARD
(Donated medical services, excluding hospital costs and supplies valued at US rates)

Total to date: 148 procedures 98 patients $556,000 value

With 18 procedures and 22 patients scheduled for surgeries today, adding in $53,140 in dental and orthodontic work, the projected value of Rotaplast’s first trip to India will top $600,000, according to June Minami and Louise Capozzi, who are keeping track of these things.

Tonight the team is thanking their Vinayaka Hospital colleagues and interns with a shindig at the Paris hotel. Tomorrow night the team will be honored with a concluding ceremony featuring traditional Tamil dances and music.

We’ll skip posting our journal for Saturday in order to document all of this, plus capturing a photographic record of “before and after” portraits of the true stars of this story – the patients themselves. Please log on to this website Sunday for a wrap-up of our Mission to India.

Rex Weiner
Wayne Schoenfeld