“But I hazarded a guess that his longevity of existence was probably severely curtailed,” she said.

Still, the team reached a conclusion that surprised them: “There was no real compelling reason to think of bringing him back to Florida,” Father O’Loughlin said. “We needed to focus on getting help to him or him to help in Guatemala.”

Help has been slow in arriving.

When The Times took the trek to visit him in late June, Mr. Jiménez had not budged from his hilltop home since returning there and no medical professional had visited him, either. With his mother too frail to move him into his wheelchair, his life had shrunken to the confines of his bed, across from his mother’s.

During the visit, Mr. Jiménez, wearing a nubby Adidas hat and a ski jacket, sat wrapped in a Guatemalan blanket; his mother, who wore a traditional woven skirt, with a floral scarf braided through her long gray hair, stood by his side. She patted his head; he reached out to pick lint from her sweater.

A few days prior, he had suffered a particularly violent seizure.

“He was almost dead,” his mother, Mrs. Gervacio, said in Kanjobal, which was translated into Spanish by a school principal serving as interpreter. “For many years, I am caring for him like he is a baby, changing his diaper, washing him. But this is worse. I am worried to leave him alone at all.”

She is right to worry, said physicians consulted for this article. Patients suffering seizure disorders run the risk of injuring themselves  and of increasing their brain damage.

Still, Mrs. Gervacio does leave from time to time, she said, to go to Mass, shutting the door behind her and hoping for the best.

“It scares me a lot when you leave, Mama!” Mr. Jiménez blurted out, revealing that he was intently following the conversation that at first took place as if he were not there.