A Special and Personal Message from Oregonains for Food and Shelter,
Many of you know that Paulette, along with her husband Ken, and their dear friend, Marylin Shannon (former State Senator from the Salem area) left last week on a pilgrimage to Medugorje. Paulette is a devout Catholic and has dreamed of this trip for a long time. From Wikipedia:Me?ugorje (meh’-joo-gor-yeh) is a town located in western Herzegovina in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina , around 25 km southwest of Mostar and close to the border of Croatia. Today the town is best known due to reported apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary which appeared to six Herzegovinian Croats since June 24, 1981, and is now visited by pilgrims from around the entire world as a shrine.
Last Friday they were site seeing. Paulette was on a narrow, busy street and backed up to avoid a speeding taxi cab when she fell over a rock retaining wall. She did a full backward flip and landed on her back in a 10-foot fall. Her head landed between two rocks and it is miraculous that she didn’t hit one of them in the fall.
The first report we heard was that she had probably broken her back. She was taken by ambulance to a clinic in Mostar where they determined that she did not have any broken bones. Since then we’ve learned that the clinic was primitive and filthy – Ken described it as the dirtiest place he’d ever seen. Lights were hanging by a single electrical wire, etc. So who knows what kind of or how old of equipment they used to diagnose her condition. We don’t realize what excellent health care we have available to us in the United States until you hear of a place like this.
The only pain medications they could offer her were ones she is allergic to, so she’s been going through this entire ordeal without anything to help her with the pain. She was discharged and they returned to the home they were staying at in Medugorje. Marylin and Ken quickly realized that something wasn’t right and that they needed to get Paulette out of the country and to a better equipped hospital staffed with personnel with a lot more training that what they’d experienced in Mostar.
So began the long process of trying to get Paulette air lifted out of the country. There are many who have worked behind the scenes for them to get out of Bosnia Herzegovina. A special thank you to Mike Fahey and Columbia Helicopters, Inc. and to Congressman Greg Walden and his staff for making this happen. Paulette is so well connected, and well loved, that everyone wants to do whatever they can for her in her time of need. It’s a pleasure to help her out, when she does so much for all of us.
We had word from Al Shannon (Marylin’s husband) at about noon today (Tuesday, October 7, 2008) that Paulette, Ken and Marylin boarded an air ambulance in Mostar today and are now in Vienna, Austria. Paulette was transported by ground ambulance to Rudolfinerhaus, a private hospital. http://www.rudolfinerhaus.at/page/start.mv?FRAMES+0+2+0+0+
All are exhausted. Paulette is resting at the hospital and Ken and Marylin have gone to a hotel near the hospital to get some rest. Tests will begin tomorrow.
We will keep you posted. In the meantime, if you are a person of faith, please pray for Paulette and Ken, Marylin, and their families. If you are not, please send good thoughts their way.
A special thanks to Al Shannon for keeping us up to speed on the “Breakout from Bosnia” and to their daughter Christy Shannon Lowry for much of the detail included here.
Sandra K. Schukar
OFS Office Manager
3415 Commercial ST SE, Suite 100
Salem, OR 97302
Phone: 503-370-8092 Fax: 503-370-8565
Email: [email protected]
OFS Website: www.ofsonline.org
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