‘DIPLOMACY AT ITS BEST’ IN CHINA

23 January 2007 – Philippine Consul General in Xiamen Emelinda Lee-Pineda reported to the Department of Foreign Affairs that Ms. Gladys O. Perey, Foreign Service Staff Employee III of the Philippine Consulate General in Xiamen, was highly recommended for her “unsolicited kindness” for helping a paralyzed Chinese native to recover, which the Consul General described as “diplomacy at its best.”

This act was featured in an article entitled “Helping, healing hands” published in the 6 December 2006 issue of the Common Talk Weekly, a newspaper in Xiamen, which has a circulation of 30,000.

According to the article, Ms. Perey, who has been working as a consular assistant in the Consulate for five-and-a-half years, voluntarily began a massage therapy sometime August 2006 to help her neighbor Mr. Shen Zaiwen, who suffered from hemiplegia that paralyzed the left side of his body. After three months of help from Ms. Perey, Shen was finally able to walk again.

Before the massage therapy, Shen had stayed in Zhongshan Hospital for a month and was diagnosed with thrombus, a condition where blood clots that form in the blood vessels remain there. After being discharged from the hospital, his condition was “so bad he could not walk nor talk.” He was confined to his bed and a wheelchair and his left eye partially closed.

“Every time I passed his house I made it a point of saying ‘hi’,” Perey said. She felt compassion towards Shen’s family who could not afford to pay a professional therapist. “Since I can not help them financially, I volunteered to massage him, and I am glad to see him improving,” she stated.

In her spare time, she started to give head-to-toe massages for one to two hours. Despite of the language barrier, as Shen speaks Minnanhua and can only speak a little Mandarin, Ms. Perey was willing to continue the massages, hoping to see Shen to be able to walk again with the skill she had acquired from her mother. “My heart just goes out to them and hopefully once he is recovered, I will be able to extend my help to other families like this,” she expressed.

Shen and his family saw hope for his recovery as they witnessed gradual improvements in his health especially in the circulation of his blood, since the massage therapy. The article narrated that with the walking stick given by Perey, Shen was able to walk unaided 400 meters at a time.

“Our gratitude for Ms. Perey is beyond words. When she offered her generous help at the beginning, we were very grateful.  However, we thought she might only come here for a few times and we had never imagined a miracle like seeing my brother walk again,” Shen’s brother said.

Perey was described as a “blessing” and gave “new hope” to Shen’s family, that his doctors were amazed of his fast recovery. “Perey has really touched the family with her perseverance and generosity with her talent,” the article concluded.

With the sincerity and genuine concern demonstrated by Perey, Ambassador Lee-Pineda highly recommended her to be given a special citation by the Department and serve as inspiration to other personnel who is worth emulating.  “Indeed, to say that Miss Perey is an asset to the Service is an understatement,” she remarked. END

/epa

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