Boy, 13, Given Something To Really Smile About

By Bill Scanlon
Rocky Mountain News
March 27, 2004

Romeo Rante has a smile as big as Manila Bay.

So big that you hardly notice he has just one eye and has several scars from surgery.

Romeo, 13, was born without soft tissue or bone along a line from his left eye socket to his lip.

Colorado doctors with Uplift Internationale, a humanitarian organization begun in Colorado, first met Romeo two years ago when they flew to the Philippines to help poor children who were born with facial deformities.

Most babies with deformities as severe as Romeo's don't survive their first year, said Dr. Jamie Yrastorza, a surgeon and president of Uplift Internationale.

Doctors performed several surgeries on Romeo in the Philippines, but wanted to do the delicate removal of his blind left eye and placement of a prosthetic eye in the United States.

So this month they flew him to Denver.

Among the groups that helped pay for Romeo's transportation and stay are the Wheat Ridge Rotary Club, St. Joseph Hospital and Face the Challenge,a humanitarian organization that performs facial surgery on Third World children.

On March 10, oral surgeon Dr. Randolph Robinson of Lone Tree, who founded Face the Challenge, reconstructed the inside of Romeo's face with bone from his hip. Assisted by Yrastorza, Robinson then reconstructed the left eye socket so it would accept a prosthesis.

On Thursday at Robinson's office, Romeo had staples from the March 10 surgery removed from his scalp. In four weeks, Littleton ocularist Barbara Spohn-Lillo will put in the prosthesis.

In all, $30,000 worth of care will have been donated, including $20,000 worth of medical professionals' time.

Romeo is staying with former Peace Corps volunteer Jay LaVigne of Broomfield and his Philippine-born wife, Donna.

"I'm having fun," said Romeo, using Donna as an interpreter. "I tried McDonald's and Wendy's, but I still prefer Filipino food."

Jay LaVigne said Romeo indeed is having fun here, but misses his family so much - he's the oldest of seven siblings - that he "basically sleeps with the family photo every night."

Before the surgeries, Romeo was highly prone to infections in his ears and lungs, Yrastorza said. "Feeding was a huge problem, as was pneumonia."

"Not only is he a survivor, but he has a tremendously engaging personality. Everybody who saw him just fell for him.

"Most of these children have psyches that are affected by deformity - they're typically battered and ridiculed."

Romeo sailed through elementary school, often the center of positive attention. But he grew more self-conscious and didn't want to go to secondary school until he had a more normal face.

Among Caucasians in the United States, cleft palates occur in 1 in 1,000 pregnancies, Yrastorza said. In the Philippines, it's closer to 1 in 350, and in Africa, 1 in 300.

The prevailing theory is that in places where there has been good access to health care for a long time, the person born with a cleft palate gets surgery, blends in with mainstream society and marries someone without the defect. The kids rarely inherit the defect, and it grows rarer in that society.

In a culture without access to surgery, the person is shunned and is more likely to marry someone else with the defect, increasing the chances that the cleft palate will be passed to the children.

The worst of the surgeries are over for Romeo, Yrastorza said. "From here on, it just gets better, as the scar tissue settles down.

"He's not going to be perfect, but he'll look pretty normal," Yrastorza said. And with that going for him, he might just do great in life.