Thread: FL-plastic surgeon offers free surgery to burned immigrant

Boynton Beach plastic surgeon offers free surgery to burned immigrant


Palm Beach Post

9:33 a.m. EDT, August 17, 2009


BOYNTON BEACH - She was standing too close to the grill, she realizes now. When her brother threw more lighter fluid on the fire, the flame leapt up and engulfed her McDonald's work shirt. She screamed and tore at it and her brother ripped it off with his bare hands burning.

"I tried to take it off myself," Tela Patricio says. "But I couldn't."

It has been more than a year since the hospital stay, and the worst of the pain has passed. But Patricio, 41, still has a large hardening scar protruding from her neck that makes turning her head increasingly difficult.

Today, a plastic surgeon hopes to fix it. Working with the Caridad Center of Boynton Beach, Dr. Luis Viñas has offered to remove Patricio's scar and graft new skin in its place.

But selling the idea to Patricio hasn't been easy. An illegal Mexican immigrant whose real name is not being used to protect her identity, Patricio was reluctant at first to undergo the surgery -- even though it was free.

Despite the pain, cleaning houses, as she now does to cobble together a living, seemed a lot more sensible than weeks recuperating in bed.

"It was more important to have a day of work and that money than cosmetics," said Lucille Guzman, patient liaison at the Caridad Center, a nonprofit that works to help impoverished local day laborers and agricultural workers. "We had to convince her."

But now Patricio says she is ready. She will go under the knife today and emerge, her plastic surgeon hopes, with less pain and more confidence.

Patricio remembers greeting the invitation to have plastic surgery with skepticism.

"They said the doctor wants you to look better," she recalls. But she wasn't so sure. She was worried about not being able to work.

Indeed, when she went to Viñas' office Friday morning for a meeting before today's operation, that was her only question: How long will I have to be in bed?

But she feels grateful for the help and relieved that maybe she can put aside the turtlenecks and scarfs she has used to mask her disfigured neck. She says she hopes once again to be able to look up and to her right without pivoting her whole body.

"It's going to look better and it's going to make her function better," Viñas said. "Everything is going to be like new."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/palm-b ... 2184.story


I thought they were illegals ...

This is great that a doctor is doing this. But then does he turn around and charge other Americans for this scar procedure to help the illegal woman. I would be amazed that he is not overcharging others. Her home country needs to pay her medical debt or MCDONALD'S. MCDONALD'S BOYCOTT THEM !

Originally Posted by vmonkey56

This is great that a doctor is doing this. But then does he turn around and charge other Americans for this scar procedure to help the illegal woman. I would be amazed that he is not overcharging others. Her home country needs to pay her medical debt or MCDONALD'S. MCDONALD'S BOYCOTT THEM !

It's kinda hard to boycott McDonalds when you have a 6 year old. If I could, I would

I have four children and I have done great at boycotting them. My niece nearly died from eating a bad hamburger under cooked at McDonald's when she was three years old.