Another Child, Another Chance To Honor Life

“Your children are not your children. 
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 
They come through you but not from you, 
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.”

-Khalil Gibran

This fragment above is from a poem I read at my daughter’s funeral in September 2009. The tears I’ve cried for Brianna have been consoled by the mere concept withheld in Gibran’s spiritual words: that God places his most prized possessions in our hands only for a short while.

Brianna

The thought that God gave me the opportunity to parent Brianna, if only for a while, has ceased being just a consolation. It has given me sincere joy. And now, behold, the opportunity of having another child in the house. Angel, age five months, who has a congenital heart disease.

Brianna died at one of Houston’s best hospitals at age 3½ of a rare, incurable condition called pulmonary hypertension. I recently learned that, ironically, thousands of children in developing countries die of congenital heart diseases that are treatable because treatment is scarce or nonexistent where they live.

One logical stopgap to that tragic irony is to bring those children, one-by-one, to facilities in Texas and Louisiana to receive lifesaving surgery and send them back with Mommy and Daddy to live normal, healthy lives. So, when I learned that this was the mission of HeartGift and that this nonprofit was establishing a chapter in Houston I knew I had to be part of this.

I was invited to participate as board member, an honor I accepted in December 2010. My first request was to become the host parent of the fist child patient from a Latin American country. That way I could be a translator/interpreter as well.

Mingjuan (patient's mom),
Yan (patient) and
Yao Ming

HeartGift Houston’s very first patient was an 11-year old boy from China. He was very lucky in the sense that the most patients with his condition do not get to live beyond 20 years of age without corrective surgery. During his visit to Houston he was well received by the Chinese community and even got to meet Yao Ming.

Angel

Angel, who lives with his parents in a small town in El Salvador, will be our second patient, but the first one in 2011 and also the first one I will get to see since I became a board member of Heart Gift Houston. Last Saturday, I received Angel’s photo for the first time, as my husband TJ and I will be his host-parents. We wept as we saw how cute he is and at the thought of having another baby in the house. That’s when I blurted it out on facebook -sorry guys!

Dr. William Douglas scheduled Angel’s surgery for Wednesday, May 25 at Children’s Memorial Herman Hospital. Our other partner organization, Childspring International, is taking care of the Angel’s (and his Mommy’s) passports and humanitarian visas, which must be ready before May 21. They are also conducting a background checks on my husband and me (the ironies abound, as my husband is a police officer).

Angel must then travel with Mommy on Saturday May 21, at the latest, so he can have time to attend his pre-surgery appointments and tests.

Hopefully, everything will go according to this tight schedule because even though there would be another window of opportunity for surgery on early June, each day without the surgery poses risks.

So, little Angel could not come any sooner. Some of our closest friends have volunteered help. One of them already brought us a truckload (literally) of toys and baby necessities. Now I know why Texas must have big pickups: they need them to haul around all that generosity and compassion.

After the surgery, which I know in my heart will be successful, Angel will still stay with us for a few weeks for his recovery, until Dr. Douglas says he his healthy enough to fly back to El Salvador. In the mean time, we want to have a party for him here at home.

If you want to celebrate with us, shoot me an email or leave a comment here.