THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 3, 1996 TAG: 9605020138
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEXIS M. SMITH, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
DOCTORS FROM El Salvador, Mexico and Guatemala could not figure out what was wrong with 4-year-old Marta Elizabeth Santamaria-Molina.
From the time she was born in San Salvador she needed to continually wear a catheter to expel the waste from her bladder.
She was constantly getting life-threatening infections. Her bladder would cause urine to rise up into her lungs. And several times she almost died from the infections.
Her parents, Jose Antonio and Marta Molina, missionaries with a non-denominational church called Oasis, had just about given up finding medical help until an organization called Cross Connection in Atlanta offered to help them.
Pam Rundel of Cross Connection contacted Dr. Steven Warden, a urologist in Virginia Beach and requested he examine Marta to determine the cause of her problems. Warden and his wife Margarita willing agreed. This wasn't the first time the two had volunteered their services and opened their home to help children from San Salvador.
They brought Marta in for diagnostic testing and discovered the problem, a congential bladder malformation.
``The bladder walls were very thick, so thick that it would not expand and contract to expel the urine,'' said Steven Warden.
He decided that surgery was called for and even though he had never done the process, he thought that he could use part of the little girl's stomach to enlarge the bladder. His expertise is in reconstructive surgery, taking from the bowel, not from the stomach and rebuilding a bladder, not enlarging one.
He called together a team of doctors, including Dr. Paul Braunstein, general surgery, and Dr. Renee Woodford, anesthesiologist, and nurses for the five hours of surgery.
The surgery, a gastro cystoplasty, removes a portion of the stomach and inserts it into the bladder enlarging it. He also inserted the appendix directly into her bladder and capped it so that it can be used as the site for catheterization.
Before she goes home Marta will have three weeks of training so she can learn when it's time to relieve her bladder. She will also learn how to insert a small tube into the opening to catheterize herself a few times a day, instead of having a catheter line inserted every eight days, a procedure which caused her trauma every time it was done in the past.
After being released from the hospital, she and her mother, who speaks no English, are staying with the Wardens during Marta's recovery period.
``I was brought up to help people, it just seems like a natural thing for me to do,'' said Margarita Warden. ``My family speaks Spanish and enjoys helping out.
``When Marta arrived in Virginia Beach my son, Scott, 18, took her down to the Oceanfront and this was the first time she had ever seen the ocean. She was afraid of it, but enjoyed the outing,'' she said.
Marta's father, Jose Antonio who stayed at home in Central America, made a tape for his daughter telling her how much he loved her and how much he was going to miss her. He also sang some of her favorite songs.
Her mother would play the tape for Marta whenever the little girl needed to hear her dad's voice.
Speaking through Margarita Warden, who served as the interpreter, Marta's mother, who is also named Marta, said, ``We are grateful for Dr. Warden and his family. They walked us through all the steps so that we understood. We are happy for the opportunity we were given to bring our child here through Cross Connection. And we hope that she can lead a more normal life now. She'll even be able to start school.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by STEVE EARLEY
Marta Elizabeth Santamaria-Molina, 4, is comforted by her mother,
Marta, in her bed in the ICU at Virginia Beach General. Little
Marta, from El Salvador, had surgery to correct a congenital bladder
problem.
by CNB