A Mother Recalls Her Daughter's Long Journey to Shriners Children's Texas

Belen doesn’t remember exactly how her accident happened.

She just remembers playing with a puppy on a rooftop in her hometown in Mexico, and her right arm accidentally coming into direct contact with power lines.

Neighbors quickly alerted her mom, Jovita, who rushed to be by her daughter’s side. When she first saw Belen, she said her mind went to the worst possible outcome. “I got to the edge of the house and saw her lying there, all burned up,” she said. “When I looked at her, she was dripping some fluid and it smelled very bad. Then, I thought, my daughter had died.”

An ambulance was called to the scene, but would not travel to the family’s location. So, Jovita decided to take matters into her own hands and use the family’s pickup truck to transport Belen to the local hospital. “I said: 'Let’s go, let’s take her,'” she said. Once there, the family was told that Belen was badly hurt and that she would need a cardiologist. But, no treatment or cardiologist was available.

Doctors recommended that Belen seek treatment at a hospital nearly two and half hours away. However, no ambulance would travel to that hospital either. So, Belen and her family would have to make the difficult journey themselves. After a month of treatment there, Belen’s doctor recommended that she see a plastic surgeon for the burns on her arm, and any possible infection.

This led Belen and her mom to Shriners Children’s in Guadalajara. There, she was treated for infection in her arm and she received more plastic surgery. However, Belen needed her tendons reattached, a procedure that they did not perform at that hospital. Upon her doctor’s recommendation, the family took a 10-hour journey from Guadalajara to Shriners Children’s in Galveston, Texas.