Last week, two of our volunteers went to visit one of these new families. What they found was heartbreaking. Ramona Diaz and her son, Jose, live in a one room shack. Jose is 29 years old and bedridden. He hasn’t always been that way, but several years ago a wound on his leg got infected and turned into a nasty ulcer. Unable to get adequate medical care, the ulcerated wound got worse and the infection eventually penetrated into the bone. Finally they took Jose to the hospital, but by then it was too late. In order to save his life, the doctors had to amputate Jose’s whole leg, up to his hip. They also had to do a colostomy on him.
Now Jose is confined to bed. “But he doesn’t let it get him down,” his mother shared. “He reads his bible every day and keeps a good attitude.” Jose chimed in, “Yeah, I’m almost finished reading it all the way through!” He was quite happy about that.
Struggling to even pay their rent, the family cannot afford to buy enough colostomy bags, so they wash them out and reuse them. Being in bed, Jose has developed a painful sore on his back. We were immediately concerned about the risk of it getting infected, so we called the doctor at our medical clinic, explaining Jose’s condition. She told us to bring him to the clinic so that she can examine him, which we made arrangements to do.
We have added them to our list of folks who receive groceries each week from the Lord’s Food Bank, and we are looking into where we can get them a supply of colostomy bags. We were so glad we learned about their plight so we could lend them a helping hand.