OSF-Haitian Hearts Patient Heurese to have Heart Surgery at Cleveland Clinic--February 1, 2016

 

Heurese (Photo by John Carroll–2009)

In the early 2000’s on a medical trip to Port-au-Prince, I was approached by a young lady named Vita who told me that her sister had a heart problem. She said that her sister’s name was Heurese and that Heurese was bed-ridden in their mother’s home in Bainet–a village located in southern Haiti on the coast.

Vita told me that Heurese was so sick that their mother had already purchased a nice wooden casket and had it hanging over Heurese’s bed so the rats would not disturb it.

I asked Vita if she could get Heurese to Port so I could examine her. She said she would and the next day Heurese arrived in Port. Her exam revealed a very leaky aortic valve and a hole in her heart located just below her aortic valve. Heurese was in congestive heart failure and needed heart surgery which was not available in Haiti.

We brought Heurese to OSF-SFMC in Peoria in 2002 for heart surgery. After one serious complication, she did well and went back to Haiti with a much happier heart.

During the next few years she delivered two healthy babies in Port-au-Prince and Maria and I kept in close contact with her during our frequent trips to Haiti. However, by 2008 Heurese needed repeat heart surgery but OSF in Peoria refused to reaccept her for repeat surgery. And without surgery she would die and her kids would be orphans.

See this post.

It is very difficult for me to find medical centers in the US to accept OSF’s Haitian Hearts patients when they need repeat heart surgery. Medical centers all over the US feel it is OSF’s ethical responsibility to follow-up with their own “international patients”…like Heurese.

However, in 2008 Cleveland Clinic did step up and we brought Heurese to Ohio. She was successfully reoperated in Cleveland and recovered in Ohio and in Peoria. Heurese then returned to Haiti once again.

During the last eight years we have followed Heurese closely in Haiti. In addition to her heart problem, she has an over active thyroid (Grave’s Disease) which we have been medically managing also. In addition to her heart and thyroid problems, Heurese survived Port-au-Prince’s serious kidnapping “epidemic” and gang wars in the mid-2000’s, hurricanes and mudslides, and she walked away unscathed from Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake which killed 230,000 people in 40 seconds.

However in 2014, due to her declining  health and the danger of living in Port-au-Prince, Heurese gave her children to her mother to raise. She was slowly giving up.

Haitian Hearts moved Heurese to the Dominican Republic for health care in mid-2014. She stayed with her sister Vita in Santo Domingo. (Vita had moved to Santo Domingo years before and was a cook for Haitian construction workers in the capital.) The Dominican physicians who examined Heurese and repeated her echocardiogram concluded that there was nothing they could do for Heurese besides a heart transplant. After a few months in Santo Domingo,  Heurese decided to return to Port-au-Prince and so we brought her back.

During the last several years we examined her frequently in Port and studied her echocardiograms obtained there.  We also continued supplying her with all of her heart and thyroid medications which we purchased in Peoria and took to her in Haiti. Haitian Hearts also paid for Heurese’s rent of her one room shack where she stayed in Port.

Over the years I kept in contact with Heurese’s very kind and knowledgeable thyroid doctor in Cleveland. With her advocacy Cleveland Clinic, considered the top heart hospital in the United States, accepted Heurese back. Heurese is scheduled for her third heart surgery on Friday.

Vita, Heurese’s sister, no longer lives in the Dominican Republic.  With the anti-Haitian sentiment in the Dominican, she left for Brazil. She now lives and works there. (Brazil has recently accepted thousands of Haitians like Vita fleeing Haiti for economic reasons.)

We keep in contact with Vita via social media. She loves her sister very much and is asking for everyone’s prayers for Heurese on Friday morning.

Haitian Hearts thanks Cleveland Clinic very much for giving Heurese another chance.

 

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org