One of the most memorable moments in Lisa Thornton’s 15-plus years as a physician was seeing a small child smile. The two-year-old boy had nearly drowned in a pond a few months back. The accident severely damaged his brain, and doctors didn’t think he’d ever speak or talk again, let alone smile.
“This little boy is sitting on the table smiling,” said Thornton, a 10-year Oak Park resident. “It was a pretty cool moment. He’s not fine, he’s not normal, but he’s so much better than we ever thought he could get.”
“I was in tears,” she said recalling the moment. “When physicians think that things aren’t going to get better, we’re not being cruel, but we know the statistics. There’s nothing I like more than being proven wrong in those instances. To be proven wrong by a miracle is something I wish for all of my patients.”
Thornton, 46, has worked in pediatric physical therapy in Chicago for about 10 years and practiced medicine for over 15. Typical patients are children with spinal cord injuries, brain damage, limb loss, severe burns or cerebral palsy. “Helping people live again” is the way she describes her efforts.
In 2005, while on her first trip to Africa, Thornton saw a chance to help another child smile again when hope appeared lost, and she seized it.
Priceless Gift
Pastor Horace Smith and his wife, Susan, from Thornton’s church (Apostolic Faith on the South Side of Chicago) invited her on a trip to Zambia in southern Africa. World Vision-a non-profit organization providing relief to poor families in almost 100 countries-arranged the trip and helped set up drinking wells and a small clinic in the village of Zantan.
While providing treatment to children, Thornton spotted Gift Benwa, a 7-year-old boy with a “remarkable deformity that was impossible to miss,” playing in the crowd.
During a windstorm the previous year, a tin roof with ridged edges blew off a hut in Zantan and sheared off the front of Gift’s face. His nose was splayed open. His lips were gone, and so was part of his chin. The blow also broke both of his arms between the shoulder and elbow.
“It just tore off the front of his face, basically,” Thornton said.
“I was just crying,” Gift’s father Bonald Iputa, 42, said, recalling the incident while sitting at Thornton’s kitchen table.
Gift received minimal treatment at the local clinic, but the plastic surgery needed wasn’t available in a village where locals still have to carry containers of water back from the nearby river.
After returning to Oak Park from the two-week excursion, Thornton set about calling friends, co-workers, family-anyone who could help put together enough resources to bring Gift to America, where doctors could provide the reconstructive surgery he needed.
This past May, Gift, now 9, and his father flew to Chicago-using frequent flier miles, donated by a friend of Thornton’s-to begin his recovery process.
During her trip to Africa, Thornton saw many simple yet critical problems-like the lack of drinking water and netting to fend off mosquitoes-and the problems seemed overwhelming, but Gift was someone with an issue that had a clear and visible solution.
“When I saw Gift, I felt this was something we could actually do that was very concrete, very finite,” Thornton said.
Abundant generosity
Thus far, plastic surgeons have completed one operation on Gift, free of charge, repairing his nose. Thornton hopes to arrange two or three more surgeries to completely repair Gift’s face.
Gift was malnourished in Africa, living on a diet of cornmeal and a small piece of meat per day, so his wounds didn’t mend properly, complicating the healing process.
A dentist did work on Gift’s teeth free of charge. The Cook County Assessor’s office-where her husband, Charles Smith, works-held a fundraiser for Gift. So did Mount Sinai, one of the hospitals where Thornton works. So many individuals who don’t know Gift have been more than willing to help.
“Most Americans are very generous,” Thornton said. “People want to do something; they want to help. So when they find out there’s a specific person they can help, they do it because it’s very concrete.”
Gift will return to Zantan after his final surgery is complete. For now, he and Bonald are living in the guest room in Thornton’s 4-bedroom home across the street from the OPRF football field.
He is attending third grade at Holmes School and has learned to bowl and swing a baseball bat. He also has become best friends with Thornton’s youngest daughter, Danielle, 6.
“They play together all day, every day, nonstop,” Thornton said as Gift and Danielle ran around in the backyard.
“Wonderful, wonderful relationship,” Smith, 52, seconded. “Danielle has made the transition as smooth as it can possibly be.”
“She’s very defensive of him; she doesn’t like it when people stare at him,” Thornton added.
Bonald and his son miss the rest of their family in Zantan. Gift has four older sisters (his parents named him Gift because they wanted a boy so badly) and a younger brother and sister. Bonald has only talked to his wife, Monica, twice since May.
“I miss my family,” Bonald said. He doesn’t speak a lot of English but is fluent in Bemba, Nyanja and Lunda, three of the over 40 languages spoken in Zambia.
Hope is invaluable
Thornton has had her share of memorable cases. She recalled another unforgettable patient-a 14-year-old girl living a life headed in the wrong direction-who was paralyzed from the waist down after a bullet, meant for her boyfriend, lodged in her spine.
Now 26 and in a wheelchair, she obtained her GED and is working on a college degree at Southern Illinois University, things that seemed unimaginable before the accident.
“That gunshot wound saved her life,” Thornton said.
The patient, along with the brain-damaged boy and maybe even Gift, remind Thornton of a lesson she has learned in her work as a doctor.
“There is no false hope,” she said. “All hope is very real, it’s very important, and sometimes it’s all people have, so you don’t take it away from them.”