One of our major assignments is helping patients get to New Zealand or Australia for medical treatment when treatment is not available in Tonga and they cannot afford it. The patient MAY be allowed to go off island for care after meeting requirements. Any treatment available in Tonga must be done in Tonga.We have helped patients with cancer, neck surgery, severe orthopedic injuries, heart conditions.
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| Luisa and Monti Lino |
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| Dr Sione Latu (Monti laying on the bed) |
Monti Lino had heart valve surgery when he was 5. His mother was told he needed surgery before 12 years were up. His 12th year anniversary from that surgery is next month. Mom worries he will drop dead on the date of his anniversary. We managed to get Monti in rather remarkably to see Dr Latu. We picked Luisa and Monti up and went to Dr Latu's office at the hospital. We were told he was not there and would not be for another week, but that he might be at his office in town. We drove to his clinic in Nuku'alofa. It was filled with 20-30 patients waiting. We talked with the head receptionist who talked to someone else, and then he went to the front and told the waiting people that the LDS would be next. They all nodded in agreement! (miracle 1). We met Dr Latu who remember Monti from prior visits and said he could do a new echocardigram the next day at 7:30 (miracle 2). Dr Latu did say his machine has not been working properly but he would go to the clinic and work on it that evening and call us to confirm it was working. He called about 9:30 and said he got the machine to work (miracle 3) but the machine for downloading to a thumbdrive to send to New Zealand was not. (We were needing to send a required current echocardiogram to New Zealand.) Next day, the echo machine worked perfectly, it was able to be transferred to a thumbdrive for us to send to NZ, which we did the next day (miracle 4).
This young man (17) has been accepted for heart surgery by a doctor in NZ and next week will be presented for the final approval to the Pacific Area Presidency. There will be one more hurdle after that, the case needs to go to SLC, the Presiding Bishopric, because the expected costs exceed 25K.
Approved 23 Dec 2017.
Written signed medical permission given for this post.
E/S Thomson - we have to say that this is a first for us and that is unusual as we communicate with many humanitarian couples and of course have our own experiences. We had no idea that one of way the Church helps people is to help them get major medical treatment. Thank you for sharing and we will include the young man in our prayers both that it will be approved and that he will be well.
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