Group Helps Teen Face the Future

Miriam Murillo, 17, of Baja California had decorated her earlobes with gold hoops and painted her lips a shimmery pink. But on her face, Miriam still carried the painful, disfiguring remnants of a rare childhood infection.

The top of her mouth disappears into her lower jaw and one side of her nose sinks into her face.

On Friday, Miriam and her father, Manuel, prepared for the reconstructive surgery they have been trying to find for years.

“I never really thought this day would ever come,” Miriam said in Spanish. “I had lost all hope.”

Her father, who makes a modest living as a chauffeur for the city of Loreto, said he had taken his oldest daughter to doctors throughout Mexico to no avail.

“They would take our money and tell us they could help, and nothing would happen,” he said. “We just kept spending all this money we didn’t have.”

Miriam’s luck changed when she was enrolled in a student-exchange program about two years ago. Through the sister city program, students from Hermosa Beach and Loreto, Mexico, visit each other’s country for a week.

Officials with the Hermosa Beach Sister City Assn. saw the girl and began making calls. Soon enough, they had found several doctors from Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles who said they could help and were willing to donate their services. The association would have to absorb the hospital costs.

Residents and local organizations sold ads on Pacific Coast Highway and left collection boxes at local businesses, raising about $15,000. They are hoping to raise an additional $12,000.

Miriam was born a beautiful, healthy girl with fair skin and pretty green eyes, her father said.

At about 6 months, she began vomiting and got a severe case of diarrhea. Doctors put a tube into her nose to feed her. The tube caused an infection which spread to the bones of her nose.

Doctors at Childrens Hospital speculate that Miriam was afflicted with a rare bacterial infection that destroys tissue. It created a gap in her upper gums, destroyed her upper lip and stopped her upper jaw from growing outward, as well as destroying the left side of her nose, said Dr. John Gross, one of Miriam’s physicians.

“I’ve only seen this type of infection four or five times,” said Gross, who has been doing reconstructive surgery for more than a decade. “The cases usually happen in impoverished areas. It’d be very rare to ever see this in this country.”

Last summer, a group of surgeons and orthodontists began the long process of facial reconstruction by removing bone from her hip and grafting it into the separation in her front palate.

Doctors are preparing Miriam for her next major surgery in July, in which they will make an incision under her upper lip to separate the roof of her mouth and her teeth from the rest of her face in order to move her jaw forward.

For several weeks, a halo-type device will be affixed to her skull, hooking into her upper jaw and teeth to gradually move her jaw forward.

The device is equipped with a small screw that she will have to turn about a millimeter a day, Gross said.

When that is done, doctors will begin nasal reconstructive surgery. “I wish it were happening sooner,” Miriam said. “I’ve been waiting so long for this.”

Her father is eternally grateful to the generous American strangers, he said.

“For a parent, it’s the most awful feeling not to be able to help your child,” he said.

In tears, Manuel clutched his daughter to his side. She hugged him tightly and tilted her head on his chest but did not cry.