More Good News!

Five-year-old Jenny had her PDA closed today in the cath lab at Cleveland Clinic. This involves threading a spring through her femoral vessel up to the opening between her pulmonary artery and the aorta. Then, the interventional cardiologist pops it into the opening (AKA the ductus arteriosus), effectively closing it. The doctor called John very pleased by how things had gone. Jenny will be able to go home with her host family on the same day, and will likely be cleared to return to Haiti by the end of the month. Jenny’s PDA had not yet begun to cause her serious problems. But it would in the future. It’s great for the doctors to be able to correct a potentially life-ending problem when the child is still healthy. This is a luxury we don’t often have with the children from Haiti (e.g. Emmanual and others), but with Jenny we did.

It’s been our experience that most doctors love, love, love to operate/do procedures on/take care of kids from the developing world. Most of them make a lot of money and this is a way for them to give back. Cleveland Clinic has a lot of residents, fellows and attending doctors from all over the world. Jenny’s interventional cardiologist is from Pakistan. Some of these doctors from places other than the United States have an especially acute awareness of how poor medical care is in the developing world. Jenny’s doctor thanked John for the opportunity to help Jenny.

With two children getting their hearts mended in the span of two days, it’s been a banner week for Haitian Hearts!