The Blog

What If?

A few months ago, our founder, Jamie McMutrie, sent me an email request that was uncharacteristically demanding: “I need to talk to you. Now.”

Jamie rarely makes demands, and when she does, she often prefaces them by saying: “I don’t mean to be a pain, but . . .” She’s strong for a variety of reasons, but mostly because she gives a lot of herself and asks so little of us.

So when she asked me to do something—now—I knew well enough to listen. And what I heard was a story, new to HFF, about a 17-month old girl, Ylionise, with a congenital heart condition called VSD that would, in her case, prove deadly. She needed a surgery she couldn’t get in Haiti, which meant she needed a medical visa to leave the country as well as a doctor and a hospital elsewhere willing to donate their services. Jamie had heard from a staff member of a hospital she regularly visits that Ylionise’s mother, Gertha, and her father, Ylionel, already spent their meager savings getting their daughter medical tests. After months of watching their daughter get sicker and sicker, they were getting desperate. The only help that had been offered to them involved relinquishing Ylionise to an orphanage that, after the surgery, would place her for adoption outside of Haiti.

We wanted to give Ylionise and her family another option. But Jamie and our staff in Haiti knew little about how to obtain a medical visa, and none of us knew to whom we might turn for help with getting the medical staff and resources we would need. We did know that, as a young organization, we couldn’t afford to provide much financial assistance. “Do you think we could do this?” Jamie and I asked one another. That question implied another, more daunting one we didn’t ask out loud: what if we can’t?

But, as it turned out, we could, with a lot of help. One of our board members, Lynn Lebowitz, contacted a friend who’s involved with Patrons of the HeARTs, a Florida-based organization that evaluates and treats children like Ylionise with congenital heart defects. Patrons found an incredibly generous sponsor, K. Fehling & Associates, to fund Ylionise’s medical costs. They also connected us to a Jacksonville-area family, the Gabets, who opened their home and their hearts to Ylionise and Gertha while they are in the United States. In Pittsburgh, Team Tassy helped with the visa process. Haitians, most especially Claude Raymond, Director of Immigration, were as eager as Americans to help the family, and together with U.S. embassy officials, they made it possible for mother and daughter to travel to the U.S.

Most of all, it was Gertha’s and Ylionel’s devotion to their daughter, their determination to give her a chance to live, that made what seemed impossible a reality. Ylionise had surgery a few weeks ago and is recovering marvelously. She and her mother are almost ready to go home to Ylionel and Ylionise’s sister, Seralda, in Haiti. Someone asked, “what if,” and a lot of people came together to answer. And a child’s life is saved. And a family stays a family.

Shortly after we started working on Ylionise’s case, Partners in Health and a pediatrician in Haiti told us about another child, Junior, who, like Ylionise, needs help. Junior is a 12-year old boy who needs heart surgery for a condition he contracted by a fever when he was two. He will die soon, we have been told, if he does not get the kind of help Ylionise received. Generous as a child, Junior has told Jamie that he is glad such a small girl as Ylionise will no longer have to face death from a heart condition, as he does. He celebrates Ylionise’s new lease on life, and might be happy with his own fate knowing that she will survive. We would not be.

 

 

 

 

 

We don’t know how we can help Junior. But we know what will happen if we don’t.

–Jean Griffith, Executive Director