I sat in an office building this week in Boston's South End meeting with members of Brigham and Women's Hospital. We had gathered to discuss plans for an upcoming fall event honoring one of my favorite groups, Team Heart Rwanda. Each year, Boston cardiac surgeons, nurses and technicians travel to tiny Rwanda and perform life saving surgery for the nation's young people. They do this on their own dime and time. Sadly, in a county of 10 million, there is not one trained open-heart cardiac surgeon. They were either killed or fled during the genocide. As the infrastructure to support their work is slowly rebuilt, children have been dying without simple penicillin to treat strep infection. Many who survive childhood with untreated strep are left with rheumatic heart disease and will soon die without open-heart surgery.
Team Heart includes many wonderful caregivers who kept my husband alive for a long time, and The Match will toast them at a gala on November 10th at Harvard Medical School presenting a share of proceeds from book sales. But, as our discussion turned to corporate sponsors for the party, I was far away, looking out the window at the Prudential Center across the street. It seemed impossible to believe that just a few years ago, Joseph and I bought our first house right around the corner; a bombed out brownstone in what was then a rough and tumble not even ready to be gentrified kind of frontier-land. My old neighborhood was almost unrecognizable to me now. Boston Duck Boats filled up with chattering tourists in front of a Cheesecake Factory. Tall buildings loomed over what was once cracked sidewalk.
So much has been created and much also lost in the intervening years since those early days when colored sheets tacked up on windows served as early my first curtains. While Rwanda was losing a generation, Joseph and I were busy creating two members of a new one. Team Heart Rwanda is a reminder that nothing is ever completely lost.
Visit Team Heart Rawanda. http://www.teamheart.org/tag/susan-whitman-helfgot/)
Susan Whitman Helfgot
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