Belgian teen readies for return home after tragic accident

By Phillip Ramati

Telegraph Staff Writer


You'd have thought that the horrific car wreck that Belgian teen Mike Verrezen and his family endured would have been enough.

You'd have thought that the death of his grandfather, the crippling of his father and the head injury and other wounds the 16-year-old himself sustained that will likely derail his promising soccer career was more than enough.

You'd have thought that Verrezen not even knowing the fates of his father and grandfather - the information being withheld because of his condition - was more than enough to happen to one person in a lifetime.

It's the journey Verrezen has taken after the accident, however, a tale of a hospital staff trying to cut through a Gordian knot of red tape weaved by the bureaucracy of a foreign government that really makes one wonder about the hand of Fate.

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Mike Verrezen left his home near Antwerp last month to visit his father, Ivan, who moved to Daytona, Fla., about four years ago.

Ivan's parents, Alfons Verrezen and Jeanne Cuyvers, who've been acting as Mike's legal guardians because of an illness with his birth mother, also made the trip.

Ivan, Alfons and Mike were returning to Daytona from Atlanta when the truck they were traveling in hit an 18-wheeler in the southbound lane of Interstate 75 and caught fire near the Crisp-Dooly County line in a massive, seven-car accident that would snarl traffic for more than three hours.

Alfons, celebrating his 70th birthday, died from his injuries. Ivan broke the C-3 vertebra in his neck and is a quadriplegic. Mike suffered a brain injury, severe burns primarily on his arms and a broken orbital bone (eye socket) and was taken to the Children's Hospital at The Medical Center of Central Georgia while his father was taken to a hospital in Savannah.

It would've been easy for the story to end there - Mike getting his injuries treated to get back on the road to recovery.

But that would preclude what's been the heart of this story, the human side of treating a person versus what the family considers to be the rather soulless, numbers-based system of socialized medicine in Belgium.

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Rebecca Cogburn put it this way.

"They say it takes a village to care for a child, and that's kind of what happened here," said the director of the Children's Hospital.

Certainly, almost every department at the hospital, including the legal department, has had a hand in Mike's treatment. What could've been the routine treatment of an accident victim has transcended the normal care usually expected.

"We give him huge hugs every day," said Nikki Seredick, one of Mike's nurses. "(Mike and Jeanne) are going to be part of our extended family."

Try to imagine what Jeanne, who was in Daytona at the time of the wreck, has been going through.

She has yet to return home to bury her husband, and she has managed just a couple of visits with her son because she's had to stay at Mike's side most of the time since his ability to speak is extremely limited because of the brain injury.

Jeanne speaks almost no English, and the translating service the hospital uses has only one person with a knowledge of Flemish in its entire system. Fortunately, another of Mike's nurses, Chris Slager, is of Dutch descent. There are enough similarities between the two languages that Slager, who was only in the hospital by chance the day Mike was admitted, was able to communicate with Jeanne.

A family friend of the Verrezens, Jos Delarbre, flew to Georgia to help out and has done much of the translating since.

"This medical staff worked with Mike as a human body," Delarbre said. "They don't think about the money, just Mike. They hope he's getting well. I've never seen it before, how such a medical team cares about their patient. It follows we've all become close ... we've all become friends, maybe family."

Probably the biggest reason that the hospital staff has rallied around Mike and his family are the obstacles thrown forward by the Belgian government and Eurocross, the insurance company that runs the socialized medical system in Belgium.

Eurocross had pressured Children's Hospital to release Mike almost immediately, saying that it won't cover most of his expenses in the United States and will only cover the extensive rehab he's going to need if he returns home.

Because Eurocross won't cover the treatment here and Medicaid doesn't cover expenses on foreign nationals who have health insurance, the hospital is footing the bill for what could be more than $250,000.

The youth should've been released to a rehabilitation center a couple of weeks ago to begin what will be extensive physical therapy. Instead, he's had to start his therapy at the hospital.

Usually, with such cases, the Children's Hospital wants to send patients to a facility such as Scottish Rite in Atlanta, which specializes in rehab care for children.

With no insurance and no money to pay for therapy, Scottish Rite was initially reluctant to take Mike. But letters from several of the nursing staff at Children's Hospital caused Scottish Rite to reconsider, and it was prepared to give Mike a couple of weeks of free therapy.

Eurocross, however, intervened. According to Children's Hospital officials, Eurocross said it would only take care of Mike's long-term needs if he returned to Belgium.

The company wanted Mike and Jeanne to return on a commercial flight, but the Children's Hospital picked up the tab for an air ambulance - at more than $50,000 - to make certain that there would be less risk to Mike.

"It was too risky for Mike to fly back on a commercial airline," Cogburn said. "The Medical Center administration approved an air ambulance."

The trip home this afternoon will be a difficult one.

"It's going to be somewhat of an uncomfortable ride for him," said Dr. Umesh Narsinghani, one of Mike's physicians. "It's a small plane, and they're going to have to fly north to refuel, then try and go to Antwerp. It's going to be a 10-to 12-hour flight, and he's going to be on a stretcher restrained for a long period of time."

It's been a frustrating experience for both the hospital staff and the family. Even the Carter Center tried to intervene on Mike's behalf, but to no avail.

"Absolutely," Narsinghani said. "Mike was essentially ready for rehab two weeks ago. He's wasted a significant amount of time.

"Also, (Eurocross) were dictating what to give Mike, which should've been our jurisdiction, which was strange," Narsinghani added. "They were telling us what needs to be done and how it needs to be done."

Two attempts by The Telegraph to speak with someone at the Belgian Consulate in Atlanta were unsuccessful.

"I don't understand why Eurocross doesn't agree to send Michael to Scottish Rite, when it's free for Eurocross," Delarbre said. "I don't understand. Personally, I'm really ashamed."

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Mike's doctors hope that in time, he will make a sufficient recovery. Whether he will play soccer again is uncertain. Mike was playing with a semi-pro team where the average age was 19 or 20. Pro scouts from around Belgium were looking at him, his family friend said. Those dreams are at least on hold, if not now gone.

By agreeing to fly Mike back to Belgium immediately, the Children's Hospital will turn Mike's care over to Eurocross.

"My frustration with the whole thing is that I couldn't communicate with someone (in Belgium) with what the rehab would be," said Mike's physician, Dr. Lowell Clark, who pointed out the insurance system here is difficult to deal with as it is. "(Insurance companies) want to take the (quickest) route. That might mean sending a child to a facility for adults. I'm not holding (the Belgian system) to any different standard than I would with anyone in this country. I get the impression it's run by bureaucrats and not physicians."

Based on what the doctors have been told, Ivan's injuries mean he'll be a quadriplegic and require an acute care facility or home health care for the rest of his life.

With all the family has gone through, Jeanne is trying to keep a positive outlook.

"Michael is doing well, very well," she said through Delarbre. "He's getting better so fast that someone up there is helping."




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