A year ago I won two hundred dollars betting on a horse at a Kentucky Derby party. And wouldn’t you know—few days after I won this money before I got to be self-indulgent as I certainly planned to be I got an email from a friend who is doing service work in Morocco for a couple of years. She said she’d met a boy, well, a young man really, almost twenty-two but still childlike in many ways because he was deaf, born without ear holes but with some residual hearing. She needed to raise, yes, two-hundred dollars so that this boy could get an MRI and it could be determined whether some kind of medical intervention might restore his hearing. His mother had been told that had he had surgery as an infant he would be able to hear, but this is a country of wretched poverty.
So, of course, I sent the two hundred dollars.
He got the MRI and the doctor in his town looked at it and said it was now too late for surgery. There was nothing to be done. The boy was very sad.
And I was sad but just for an instant. It didn’t make sense. If he had some residual hearing surely something could be done. So I wrote back—Don’t give up! Then I suggested we show the MRI’s to a doctor here.
It took some time for copies to be made and as my one doctor contact was traveling abroad on another medical mission for some months I suggested that my friend send out an email to her whole list to see if a doctor could be found. One was and he declared that indeed something could be done and that there were actually three possibilities. Great news.
My friend wanted the boy to come here but that would involve all manner of complication and fundraising. I couldn’t believe that even in a poor country like Morocco there weren’t some modern hospitals. My friend investigated and made arrangements for the boy to go to Casablanca to see a doctor at a big hospital there. She would need another hundred dollars for the trip. Almost nothing.
Yesterday he went and the news is better than I, at least, imagined. It’s amazing news. Yes, the doctor can restore his hearing with surgery and an implant of a hearing device and he will find the funding for the device which costs about $9,000. and he’ll do the surgery for free. AND this man who is clearly a saint will travel to the small town where this boy lives and where there is a whole community of deaf people to see if any of the others can be helped.
I love this story. I love that keeping the faith made miracles. I love that the boy wanted to hear so much that he would not give up. I love that my friend worked so hard on his behalf. I love the hugeness of heart of this doctor. And I love that I got to share my winnings—that I got to see the way good ripples forth when we act on it.
Amen.
