What's happening with Junior

In February, one of the little boys Sister Tiffany teaches on Sundays, fell out of a tree and broke the femur bone in his right leg.  This has been a scary and a sad situation.  We hadn't seen the boy at Church for a few weeks when we heard about his situation. We have blogged about it and started a Facebook page "Prayers for Junior".  Junior is 8 years old and lives with his Aunt and Uncle on the island of Weno. He was baptized by Elder Allred at the same time his brother Gladfin was baptized.  Both boys are all boy, in other words, very active. When Junior got hurt, Gladfins parents took him back to their home island of Pis and Junior has been in the hospital since. The first 5 weeks he had a bar through his leg for traction.  The leg got infected because it was not getting cleaned well.  When we spoke with the doctor, he told us that Junior was fine and that the bone was healing well.  He said he was going to put a cast on it to secure it, then he could use some crutches to move around. We asked if he could get a wheelchair instead of crutches at first.

They said he didn't need a wheelchair.  That afternoon the doctor put the cast on his leg and the next morning the doctor left the country.  Junior was now in even more pain because it was still infected and finally, after several days had gone by, they cut holes in the sides of the cast to monitor the infection and try to heal it. You may imagine that none of this set well with us. We began speaking to people about getting him released and getting him transferred off the island to somewhere he could receive better medical care.  We were told again, No! He was fine and they would not refer him. We spoke with several more friends and one friend donated a substantial amount of money to pay for the airfare. Another friend put us in contact with people who had some influence. A fair number of good people, doctors and nurses here and away, got involved with this and many, many prayers later, we finally will be sending Junior to Hawaii for treatment at the Shriner's Hospital.

Look at these Xrays.  This boys leg was going to heal on its own this way.  We're not orthopedists or even doctors but this does not look good to us, short or long term.  He may have survived okay, we don't know but he surely would not have had a normal life. The family's prayers and our prayers and the prayers of many others have been answered.  Thank you everyone! But please keep Junior in your prayers he has a long road ahead of him to recover.