A few days ago I sent this email out on behalf of Haitian Hearts’ patient Heureuse.
Heureuse is a 29-year-old female who lives in Haiti. She was operated at OSF in 2002 for a serious congenital heart problem. As the letter explains, Heureuse needs more surgery now.
OSF in Peoria has abandoned Heureuse. Unless she has surgery soon she will leave two little children in the slum without parents. Heureuse and her kids are suffering greatly now with the "food shortage" that has gripped Haiti.
Today I forwarded an email from Haiti describing Heureuse's condition to Keith Steffen, CEO of OSF-SFMC. The email bounced back consistent with OSF's policy blocking my email as it has done in the past. OSF Corporate leaders have blocked my ability to communicate with OSF which is endangering Heureuse and other Haitian patients even more.
International Committee and Children’s Hospital Community Advisory Board
August 14, 2008
Dear
Haitian Hearts is currently working on bringing 14 more patients to the States this year for heart surgery. Two other children were successfully operated on earlier this year.
However, in addition to the above, we have three previous patients that need to come back to OSF to be reoperated in Peoria.
Many of you will remember Jenny Guillaume, Heuruese Joseph, and Henri Andrique. All three were operated at OSF 5-10 years ago.
Haitian Hearts has followed up with these patients in Haiti after they left Peoria and we supply them with examinations, medications, repeat echocardiograms, etc. during our frequent stays in Haiti.
Jenny is 29 years old now and teaches hearing-impaired students in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. She has never been married and still lives with her mother. She communicates with us by email and is fluent in French and Creole. She also speaks English fairly well. She and her family have helped us considerably in Haiti over the years.
Heureuse is 29 years also. She lives in a seaside slum in Port-au-Prince. She is raising her two small children alone. Her father is dead and her family lives on Haiti’s southern coast and is not able to be of much help to her. She has no job and Haiti’s food prices have climbed dramatically over the course of the last year. Heureuse and her kids go to bed hungry.
I have learned in the last few days that Heureuse is very sick. She is in congestive heart failure and lying in her bed unable to walk. Below is an online conversation I had with Dejean Frandy today, a Haitian Hearts patient who is 19 years old. Two other Haitian Hearts patients, Jenny Guillaume and Suze Lapierre will attempt to help Heureuse also. We are doing whatever we can to keep her alive until I can bring her to the States.
Henri is 34 years old now and just got out of the hospital in Port-au-Prince due to heart problems. He is unable to work and his weight is down to 130 lbs.
Jenny, Heureuse, and Henri all need heart surgery. All are in various degrees of heart failure due to their bad valves. I have not had any luck finding other medical centers to accept them. They will be difficult cases due to their previous surgery and their underlying pathology.
All three would like to live. What would you do if they were your relatives, children, or friends?
Please make sure that OSF and their legal counsel, Douglass Marshall, remove their embargo of Haitian kids at OSF. Their physicians would like to see them return to Peoria as would their host families.
I do not want these three to die early and painful deaths like Jackson Jean-Baptiste and Maxime Petion did after they were denied ongoing care at OSF.
I humbly ask you to be their advocates and will wait to hear from you regarding these three young adults.
John A. Carroll, M.D.
309-648-1087
haitianhearts@gmail.com
www.peoriasmedicalmafia.com
www.pmmdaily.blogspot.com
www.dyinginhaiti.blogspot.com
Online conversation between Frandy and me today regarding Heureuse:
Dejean Frandy3:18 PM Dejean: HI i need to talk to you now me: frandy, can heureuse talk to...
3:37 PM (6 hours ago)
3:18 PM Dejean: HI
i need to talk to you now
me: frandy,
can heureuse talk to you?
Dejean: yes i am there
i saw her this morning
3:19 PM she has prescription for Echocardiogram
she may need to see Dr Pilie for it
3:20 PM me: frandy,
Dejean: she has medicines
me: I want you to e mail a haitian friend of mine...her name is jenny Guillaume..
her e mail is...
3:21 PM gjenny12@yahoo.fr
3:22 PM she lives near delmas 33
she can help you and heureuse...
she is a heart patient....
heureuse needs to take a medicine called lasix (furosemeide)..
3:23 PM explain to me heureuse's condition
can she walk a little...
can she eat and drink?
Dejean: no she can not
me: are her legs swollen?
Dejean: she can but she does have money to feed herself
3:24 PM she does not have money
me: she does or she does not have money to feed her self?
is she short of breath?
Dejean: she does not have money
3:25 PM yes she is and her legs are not swollen
me: where are her kids??
3:26 PM Dejean: the boy is with her but the girl is somewhere else
maybe delmas
she has the medicine you said above
me: ok...
will you contact jenny?
3:27 PM Dejean: let me tell exactly what she needs for now
me: can you and jenny take her to the General Hospital or the hospital in leoganne??
Dejean: yes i will
3:28 PM me: ok, tell me...type fast...i will wait...
Dejean: she already went to GCH
me: ok
Dejean: she needs to do Echocardiogram
3:29 PM and Thyroidien, glycemie
me: frandy, she needs treatment with medication before echocardiogram...
Dejean: ok
3:30 PM do you have Jenny's number phone?
me: tell the doctor she has a problem with her valve aortic and valve mitral...she was operated in 2002...
no i do not have jennys number but she checks her email every day...please send her an email... and tell her to call you...
3:31 PM Dejean: ok i will do everything
me: maybe suze can help you with a ride for her to the general hospital....
Dejean: i am going to see Heures later
me: ok.
3:32 PM Dejean: i can do this
3:33 PM do you Andrique's Echocardiogram?
do you need Andrique's Echo...?
he said that he has it
3:34 PM i can scan it for you
me: tell heureuse not to take the thyroid medicine...she needs to take the furosemide...yes i need andriques echo results....maybe he can send me the results via e mail or you can scan it...
3:35 PM please get hold of jenny now...and suze...
Dejean: i will do that perhaps during the week end
ok
byeee
me: yes, the echo on the weekend is good...
heureuse is problem number one right now....
3:36 PM tell heureuse that she should take furosemide 40 mg in the morning and 40 mg in the afternoon...
3:37 PM Dejean: ok bye
talk to you later
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My comments in 2021--
1. So in 2008, OSF was blocking my emails to people with OSF email addresses which made it impossible for me to communicate with OSF policymakers to reverse their deadly embargo on my Haitian patients.
2. This situation(s) with Heureuse (and Henri and Jenny) was so sad and so desperate.
3. And who did I have helping me? Another Haitian Hearts’ patient, Frandy. Frandy was a skinny teenager from Carrefour in Port au Prince. And Frandy had a hole in his heart that did NOT require surgery. Frandy was helping me manage Heuresuse (and Jenny and Henri in Haiti!) because the 1.6 billion dollar OSF in Peoria would not. Frandy is all I had. But how sad and pathetic was this?
4. No one answered my email above.
5. As I have noted, it is much harder getting international patients accepted anywhere after they have had one surgery in the past. And many medical centers think that patients like my Haitian patients are the responsibility of the first medical center to care for them...which they are. And I believe that Haitian kids actually get better care from the first medical center especially if they are being cared for by the same medical team that cared for them with their first heart surgery.
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Maria wrote a blog post on Heureuse here on her blog site, Live from Haiti. The following is a snippet from the post—
There are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries who will die today of preventable or correctable diseases. We know this and in the abstract, we feel bad about it. But it makes a huge difference when you actually know one of these people. Heureuse spent five months in Peoria. We have seen her many times on our trips to Haiti. We know her quiet gracefulness. We know her regal demeanor with her high cheekbones and beautiful skin. We know how she manages to dress stylishly on next to no money. We know her chubby children whom her first surgery made possible. And, so, we feel desperate that she is dying. We continue to try to find a hospital to treat her. In the absence of this, we try to find people in Port-au-Prince who will care for her in her last days.
So far, the only person who has come through for Heureuse is Frandy, another Haitian Hearts patient. Frandy is in good health now. He is working hard in school with hopes to attend college in the United States. He has little money, but he is doing what he can to help Heureuse, bringing her medicines and taking her to the hospital. He reports to us as to how Heureuse is doing.
Why aren't there more people who care about Heureuse? Why, as my husband John asks, is it so hard to save a person's life?
John A. Carroll, MD
www.haitianhearts.org