Geisha Kow­lessar

Thir­teen-year-old Amer­i­can na­tion­al Paige Welch will un­der­go her 11th op­er­a­tion to­day at Boston Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal in the Unit­ed States, be­cause of a boat­ing ac­ci­dent in T&T ear­li­er this year. The teenag­er lost her left arm af­ter a boat's en­gine made con­tact with the limb, com­plete­ly strip­ping the flesh off the bone from be­low the armpit. The in­ci­dent oc­curred on Au­gust 16 at Scot­land Bay in Ch­aguara­mas, on Trinidad's north-west coast. Since then, Paige has un­der­gone sev­er­al re­con­struc­tive pro­ce­dures, in­clud­ing skin grafts. But af­ter hour-long op­er­a­tions, the arm has shown lit­tle sign of heal­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the child's aunt Tri­na Aqui, in a re­cent in­ter­view, doc­tors be­came fran­tic af­ter a part of a bone from Paige's arm be­gan pro­trud­ing out of the skin. "At first, doc­tors saw a red spot on part of the el­bow. "Then the bone be­gan rub­bing and rub­bing, un­til even­tu­al­ly some three inch­es of bone came through the skin," Aqui said. She ex­plained that dur­ing to­day's op­er­a­tion, sur­geons were ex­pect­ed to re­move a piece of flap from the skin, and shave down the bone.

"It's like re­con­struct­ing the arm all over again. We are hop­ing that when they shave it down it would not be any­thing ma­jor, be­cause we are hop­ing she can still have a pros­the­sis." She said it ap­peared the bone be­gan to pro­trude be­cause the skin used to cov­er the area af­ter the arm was re­con­struct­ed was too thin. "The skin was tak­en from her thigh, which was very thin and the bone just kept rub­bing against that un­til it just came straight through," Aqui said.

Paige's moth­er Rac­quel, who sus­tained a shat­tered left el­bow dur­ing the ac­ci­dent, is al­so booked for a third op­er­a­tion, be­cause her bones "be­gan com­ing apart." Her surgery is ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled for No­vem­ber 30. "All the steel has to be re­moved, even from the humerus. And the screws will be tak­en out. "The screw at the very top of the ra­dius near the el­bow joint is pro­trud­ing from the bone and hits the joint, pre­vent­ing full ro­ta­tion of the fore­arm. "That is al­so where the oth­er frac­ture is," Aqui said, adding that there was al­so a chance that the bone un­der the screws might al­so be un­sta­ble.

As a re­sult, Aqui said, the bone would have to be re­moved and re­placed with a steel ball. "The mus­cles around the el­bow and the humerus will be re­moved and reat­tached. "The steel on the ul­na will be re­moved and any tis­sue or bone be­tween the open frac­ture will be scraped and test­ed for bac­te­ria." She said af­ter the surgery, Rac­quel would then go back un­der the knife to have skin graft­ed from her left hip and trans­plant­ed to her ul­na.

Law­suit un­der way

Mean­while, le­gal ac­tion which the fam­i­ly has ini­ti­at­ed against the sol­dier in­volved in the ac­ci­dent is "ful­ly un­der way." Aqui said said the fam­i­ly's at­tor­ney was work­ing with cer­tain doc­u­ments com­piled since the ac­ci­dent. "Paige and her moth­er still can­not be­lieve this per­son has not come for­ward to even say sor­ry. "If Rac­quel was to see the per­pe­tra­tor she would want to hit him, and un­der­stand­ably so, be­cause he has put her fam­i­ly through hell," Aqui said.

Paige's hor­rif­ic ex­pe­ri­ence in Trinidad, Aqui said, had left her re­luc­tant to vis­it the is­land again. "Paige will on­ly re­turn to vis­it her cousins. If it wasn't for them she would have no de­sire to re­turn here." Asked about the prospects of Paige ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a nor­mal life, Aqui said her niece had drawn strength from her dis­abil­i­ty. "Paige has nev­er spo­ken of the ac­ci­dent, but I be­lieve she is not go­ing to let this stop her from do­ing what she has to do."