Shriners assist Davenport preschooler

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By Deirdre Cox Baker | Thursday, July 10, 2008 3:01 PM CDT | () comments

Jeff Cook/Quad-City Times Dominic Vargas, 5, races past his cat, Chaos, pretending alternately to be Ninja Turtle, Kung Fu Panda and a Transformer. Buy this Photo

To his loving family and friends at his Davenport preschool, Dominic Rene Vargas is an energetic force of nature.

Dominic, who just turned 5 years old, will begin kindergarten this fall, the same as other kids from his neighborhood. But Dominic, the size of an average toddler, copes with a birth defect that is being treated at the Shriners Hospitals for Children — Chicago.

He and his parents, Amy and Angel, get there via the services of the Kaaba Shrine, Davenport. The Shriners operate a volunteer-based transportation service from the Quad-Cities to the Chicago hospital that serves Dominic and more than 300 other Quad-City area children with disabilities.

To help do that job, there is a new van purchased with the help of a Scott County Regional Authority grant.

“There is no way I can repay what the Shriners have done for me,” Amy Vargas said. “I can’t imagine where Dominic would be today without them.”

A hard start in life

It was a difficult first pregnancy for Vargas. A diabetic, she carried Dominic in the breech position. Doctors at Genesis Medical Center in Davenport knew the baby was failing when they started an emergency caesarean section a month before the actual due date.

Dominic, who was born June 27, 2003, did not breathe at first and came out of the womb with his legs spread wide apart. But Amy was told not to worry, and nurses got the little fellow to take his first breath.

“But those legs really baffled them,” his mother recalled. Dominic was airlifted to University Hospitals in Iowa City, and his mother followed in an ambulance. Vargas stayed with her newborn both there and when he returned to Genesis for a month to be stabilized.

The young mother worked at MidAmerican Energy Co. at the time. A colleague who knew of Dominic’s difficulties told her about the Shriners organization. The Vargases took their baby to a screening clinic and the Shriners accepted their case.

Pediatric specialists

Shriners Hospitals for Children are an international health-care system comprised of 22 hospitals. The Shriners specialize in pediatric care and treat children up to the age of 18 years.

Conditions accepted involve orthopedic complications, burns, spinal cord injuries, and cleft lip and palate care. All services are free of charge, regardless of financial need.

Van transportation from Davenport has operated since 1970, said Alan Kluever, who chairs the Kaaba Shrine’s hospital committee. The Iowa area covered by the Shrine center located near Interstate 80 in Davenport ranges from Dubuque to Keokuk and from Iowa City to the Mississippi River. It also includes Rock Island County on a cooperative basis.

The 2008 seven-passenger Honda runs to the Chicago hospital most of the time, but it occasionally is employed to make trips to similar facilities in St. Louis, Minneapolis and Cincinnati.

Applications from people such as the Vargas family are reviewed monthly at the top-notch hospital, according to Carl Van Keuren of Bettendorf, a member of the board governing the Chicago facility.

Residents who need to use the van call the Kaaba Shrine to set up the service. Four hours are allowed to make the drive and navigate Windy City traffic, and the van — which is outfitted with a DVD player — also makes a stop at the Interstate 88 oasis outside DeKalb, Ill.

Dislocated hips

The first time the Vargases went to the Shriners hospital in Chicago, they followed the van, which was carrying another family.

The Shriners doctors took several X-rays of Dominic, who had two dislocated hips and leg bones that were turned sideways. Surgery to fix those problems was performed in February 2005.

The Vargases go for check-ups every six months and plan to continue doing so until Dominic is 18. He will need knee surgery someday and is being monitored for dwarfism, his mother said. He also appears to have a mild case of Ehler’s-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder.

“He’s extremely double-jointed,” she said. “But he accommodates himself very well.”

The youngster has trouble climbing stairs, using a railing or moving about on all four limbs. He walks by placing one foot down and swinging the second around, but he just completed his first T-ball season.

Physically, Dominic will be small in stature, his mother said, but he’s highly intelligent and “a social butterfly.”

“He reminds me of Napoleon — small but mighty,” she said. Dominic likes to do what other 5-year-olds do, but he is the size of an 18-month-old. He wants badly to play soccer, yet his mom worries about his lack of balance on the field. “He trips and falls a lot,” she explained.

Collects tab tops

The Shriners van system operates kind of like the U.S. Postal Service, in all types of weather. Sometimes trips have to be canceled, but that is rare, Kluever said.

Last year, he drove a van that needed to be at the hospital by 9 a.m. The van left Davenport by 5 a.m., but got bogged down in traffic and barely made it on time. “And the next trip, we just sailed through,” he said.

Van Keuren, who is also a volunteer driver, said he once navigated his way home through a severe sleet storm. Fortunately, he had no passengers that time.

Supporters of the organization such as Amy Vargas cannot say enough positive things about the Kaaba Shrine. In fact, she goes beyond voicing support and collects pop top tabs as a Shrine fundraiser.

She gather them from family and friends in five states for an entire year and then turns them over to the organization. She estimates that the family has delivered more than 300 pounds of the metal tabs.

Vargas is grateful for the services provided and said the collecting is the least she can do. “I will support the Shriners to my dying day,” she added.

Deirdre Cox Baker can be contacted at (563) 383-2492 or dbaker@qctimes.com.