Child becomes a surgical success

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) - Seven-year-old Mory has made quite an impression since he came to the Miami Valley from the Ivory Coast a month ago, his waves and smiles breaking through any barriers.

"He doesn't speak English, he speaks French," says Patrick Ewry, who takes care of Mory along with his 7 kids. "Nobody else in my house does."

But words aren't needed to understand what Mory has been through, and undoing the damage to a hand from a fall into a fire isn't easy.

"I can look up every single book and his hands not in there, so it's not a cookie cutter," says Dr. Brent Bamberger, who did the surgery on Mory.

Because of that $15,000 surgery done for free, Mory's hand now has a new shape.

"Now he's doing more and more things he wouldn't do before because his hand has opened up," Ewry says.

While the time he spends rehabbing with clay is helpful, there's something Mory would much rather work on, a package of peeps.

The candy is a reward for a rehab session. He still has many more to go, but Mory is expected to have nearly the full use of his hand.

"I'd be surprised if there's anything that stops him," Bamberger says.

But his good diagnosis is a bad one for one group.

"With the peeps, probably poor," Bamberger says.

The surgery and the visit were set up by Children's Medical Missions, which brings kids in need of surgeries not available where they live to the area and finds a family to host them.

Once Mory's rehab is finished, he'll head back to his family in the Ivory Coast.