SPRINGFIELD -- Simple things that most people take for granted, like hopping into a shower, brushing your own teeth or taking in a breath of fresh air, are daily struggles for Yaritza Barreto, who suffers from limb-girdle muscular dystrophy.
The chronic illness makes it difficult for Barreto to do anything without help from her parents, Lourdes Guzman and Angel Barreto. So when Hurricane Maria flooded their home in Puerto Rico last year and left them without electricity, the family had to leave the island.
"It was incredibly difficult, especially because I have medical equipment that needs to be charged and we had to wait in long lines to get a bit of gasoline for the generator," Barreto said from an examination room at the Baystate High Street Health Center in Springfield.
On Thursday, Barreto shared her story with state officials including Senate President Karen Spilka, state Sen. James Welch, D-Springfield, state Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, D-Springfield, and former state Sen. Brian Lees, and thanked them for $500,000 awarded to Baystate in the state budget to help patients just like her.
"The care I have received here has been excellent. I am incredibly grateful, not only for me but for my mother, who has diabetes," she said. "In Puerto Rico we could not keep her insulin cold because we didn't have a working refrigerator. Here they filled her prescription before we had even worked out our health insurance coverage."
Dr. Orlando Torres, medical director of the High Street Health Center and Barreto's doctor, and Dr. Mark A. Keroack, president and CEO of Baystate Health, said the money will be used to defray the costs of caring for a large influx of evacuees who arrived in the months after the Sept. 20, 2017, hurricane.
Torres, who is originally from Puerto Rico, said the devastation on the island was especially difficult for those who were dealing with chronic illnesses.
"Hospitals were left without electricity, people could not fill their prescriptions. A recent report showed that there were thousands of deaths as a result of the hurricane. These were people who could not get medical treatment," he said.
Keroack said immediately after the hurricane is when Baystate saw the most new patients, but many of them have remained in Springfield and are now regular patients.
"Springfield has such a large Puerto Rican community so naturally people came here to live with family and seek help," he said. "The welcome center at the New North Citizens Council alerted us that they were seeing 30 to 40 people a day, many with chronic medical conditions."
In response to the influx, Baystate set up an emergency medical clinic to treat evacuees as they arrived.
"We wanted to try and pick up the pieces and help them continue their medical care and we have been doing that now for nine months or so," Keroack said.
Torres and Keroack said the state funding will be used to defray the cost of treating patients who arrived with little or no medical insurance coverage.
Now that her health is in order, Barreto and her family are looking for an apartment that complies with the Americans With Disabilities act so she can move around in her wheelchair.
"We are so thankful for everything the hospital has done for us," Guzman said. "We are also thankful to the Springfield Family Resource Center for helping us find an apartment because we were living in a hotel. Now we need a place that will meet our daughter's needs since she is in a wheelchair."
Torres explained that Barreto's parents are her primary caregivers. Her father lifts her in and out of bed and into her wheelchair every day and her mother helps her with all of her needs. Currently Barreto cannot fit her wheelchair into the bathroom, making daily tasks like bathing very difficult.
Spilka thanked Barreto for sharing her story and said she understands that many families are still facing a great need.
"I knew that Massachusetts had a big influx of residents into our state after the hurricane and we knew it was important to support them, which we did by providing more funding to family resources and other areas," she said.
She credited Welch and Gonzalez with alerting her to the health care needs of the evacuees in Springfield.
"In hearing the specifics of the needs of Baystate it was an easy ask to say yes to support the funding to make the transition for these folks a little bit easier, particularly to care for their health," she said.