GOLDEN — The physician’s assistant finished casting So Reh’s recently repaired clubfoot by wrapping bright blue gauze around his lower calf.
As his leg was bandaged, Reh wondered how he will get help if he is in pain.
A political refugee from Myanmar, Reh doesn’t speak English, nor do his wife or six children.
With the help of a translator who speaks his dialect, Reh asked John Klausner to come by his Aurora apartment once a week to check in.
Klausner, youth minister at Evergreen’s Christ the King Church, met Reh during a food delivery and wanted to help repair his foot. The pastor reached out to Panorama Orthopedics and Spine Center in Golden to see whether a surgeon would help.
In May, Dr. Mark Conklin did the surgery for free. The full cost is typically $10,000.
Half an hour after a June clinic visit, Reh walked on a nearly flat foot for the first time in his life.
Reaching this first step was difficult. Reh wasn’t even sure he wanted to take the risk of the surgery.
“If you have a foot deformity, when you straighten out the foot there are many risks,” Conklin said, explaining blood supply to the foot could be lost and amputation might follow.
There was worry on Reh’s face as he reached down to touch the booted cast, which rubbed against a huge callus that had formed from almost 50 years of walking on the top of his foot.
“My biggest hope, if possible, is that I would like to get a job,” Reh said. “But my leg has created a problem.”
Even before Reh left Myanmar in August, he had debt. He borrowed about $9,000 from the International Organization for Migration to fly his wife and their four minor children to the U.S. His two older children paid their own ways.
The family lives on $700 in food stamps and $780 from Colorado’s Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. The rent on their two-bedroom apartment is about $670, Reh said.
Until the surgery, Reh was unsure how he would make his loan payments because his clubfoot made it hard to work. His two older sons work at a meatpacking plant in Greeley.
Reh has 42 months to pay back the loan. He was supposed to begin paying three months after the family arrived.
If refugees don’t make monthly payments, they risk being sent to collections, said Ferdi Mevlani, executive director of Ecumenical Refugee and Immigration Services in Denver.
But it is possible to petition for extensions, and a disability could warrant restructuring the payment schedule, Mevlani said.
Among other services, Ecumenical collects loan payments and help borrowers get extensions or reduce their payments, Mevlani said.
“The Burmese take their debt very seriously and make their payments,” Mevlani said.
Only 10 percent of refugees across the country are in default on travel loans, Mevlani said.
Conflict between ethnic groups and the government in Burma pushed Reh and his family into a refugee camp on the Thai border. The militia were forcing people in Reh’s village to join them and fight or carry weapons and goods. Reh couldn’t because of his clubfoot.
“I am happy here because many people take care of me,” Reh said. “And a lot of people provide for me.”
Sarah Horn: 303-954-1638 or shorn@denverpost.com
