GODSTUFF

WEE MAN’S HEART IS WHOLE AGAIN

Thank you, Lord, for what you’ve done for me.
Thank you, Lord, for what you’re doing now.
Thank you, Lord, for ev’ry little thing.
Thank you, Lord, for you made me sing.

— Bob Marley, “Thank You Lord”

The hole in Vasco Sylvester’s heart isn’t there anymore. On Wednesday, in a three-hour operation, surgeons at Hope Children’s Hospital in Oak Lawn, using a piece of white Gore-Tex, patched the quarter-size hole that had been there since Vasco was born.

The doctors also removed an extra membrane between the top and bottom chambers of his heart and stitched closed another tiny hole at the top of his aorta. Now, thanks to the miraculous handiwork of his surgical team — Dr. Michel Ilbawi, Dr. Chawki El Zein and Dr. Anastasios Polimenakos — his heart is working as God intended.

In the last few days since surgery, each time I’ve looked at Vasco, the 10-year-old Malawian AIDS orphan my husband and I met nearly two years ago while traveling in Africa, a line from Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters” has echoed in my mind:

“The heart is a resilient little muscle.”

By the time Vasco was wheeled in to pediatric intensive care at Hope an hour after surgeons closed the four-inch-long incision they’d made in his chest, that resilient little muscle, which had been enlarged from 10 years of working overtime to pump blood despite the huge leak, already had begun to shrink to a normal size.

As Vasco lay in bed, tubes attached to nearly every appendage, I put my hand on his chest. Gone was the violent thunk-thunking of his wounded heart, the rabbit-like beat that violently shook his body even at rest. In its place was the normal butterfly fluttering heartbeat of a child at rest. And at peace.

Vasco has a fierce spirit, like a lion. He’s small, but he’s amazingly strong. A day after surgery, doctors at Hope, where Wee Man is being treated free of charge, removed the breathing tube in his throat and took him off the ventilator so he could breathe on his own. Friday, he got out of bed, sat in a chair and was well enough that doctors removed the drainage tube from his chest.

Forty-eight hours after surgery, Vasco was sitting up in bed, eating french fries and chicken, laughing at a Jackie Chan movie he has seen at least half a dozen times and joking with Mac, the caregiver who traveled with him from their hometown of Blantyre, Malawi, to Chicago six weeks ago.

His doctors are expecting Vasco to move from ICU to a regular room at Hope over the weekend and to be able to send him home with us to Oak Park to recuperate sometime this week.

A few years back, Mac found Vasco living alone on the streets of Blantyre — a fate all too common in sub-Saharan countries wracked by AIDS. In Malawi, an estimated 1 million children have been orphaned by AIDS, and more than 60,000 of those children, like Vasco, end up living on the streets.

After his mother and father died several years ago, someone put Vasco out on the street to fend for himself, telling the tiny child he’d been cursed by a witch doctor, that ants were eating his heart and that soon he would die.

Vasco knows that was an awful lie and that, far from being cursed, he is so very blessed. He knows his heart has been repaired and that he’s going to live a long, healthy life.

Having him in our home these last six weeks, getting to know him — his sense of humor, quick wit, slow temper and tendency to boss everyone around; his taste in music, food, clothes and friends; his fears and hopes and dreams — has been the most magical and transformative experience of my life.

Vasco is a blessing. His love and loving spirit have fixed my heart, too.

He has taught me so much. About living and dying. About love and family. About what matters and what doesn’t.

I see the world differently for having known him. It’s as if the moment he put his hand in mine as we walked to the car on the curb outside O’Hare the day he arrived, my soul was recalibrated.

Everything looks different to me now. And I love it.

It was a long, sometimes tumultuous adventure getting Vasco’s heart repaired. There were many times over the nearly two years since we first met the child we call “Wee Man” in a mud-and-wattle hut by the side of the road in Malawi that I thought it might not happen, or that he would die before we could get him here for treatment.

So many people — family, friends and total strangers — have walked with us on this journey, supporting us, praying for us, carrying us when we felt as if we couldn’t keep going. And to all of you, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

To the folks at United Airlines who went out of their way to bring Vasco and Mac here for free, even though the airline doesn’t even fly from Africa: Zikomo kwambiri — thank you so very much for being his traveling mercies.

To Dr. Andrew Griffin, head of the Heart Institute for Children, who arranged for all of Vasco’s treatment at Hope, and to all of the doctors and nurses and orderlies who have shown him (and us) such beautiful compassion and tender care, bless you. You have been God’s healing hands for Vasco.

We’re not sure what will happen next in Vasco’s remarkable life. But today, he has a new lease on it.

Vasco will live, and I believe he will live boldly, paying it forward, his unbroken heart full of love, laughter, grace and promise.

Thank you.