Nevelian Paul

I suppose that because I was on the board of directors of the international children’s heart foundation located in Memphis, Tennessee with its founder being an ex University of Tennessee Pediatric Heart Surgeon there at UT. In addition to be known in the state has bringing Pediatric heart surgery patients to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. I received a phone call from a group of cardiologist in Canada that had been down to Georgetown, Guyana, where they did a medical clinic and identified a number of patients that needed pediatric heart surgery. They had tried to convince several universities in Canada to operate on these children, as well as other private individuals and no one was willing to do 12 baby hearts there. I discussed with him the fact that we were indeed set up to do pediatric heart surgery in Jimani, Dominican Republic, and that the hospital was very small and was on the “frontier“ of the Dominican Republic.

The town of Jimani is right on the Haitian border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. It was our desire to service both countries and act as a bond to overcome their animosity. The hospital was quite sophisticated with several heart lung machines like ventilator operating rooms that had the proper ventilation to do any sort of surgery, including heart surgery. I did tell them that I felt that several of our volunteers with international children’s heart foundation would be willing to go to Jimani to do the surgery. I forewarned the Canadian cardiologist that they would need to fly into Santo Domingo take a five or six hour bus ride out to the frontier where there was essentially no backup or large facilities in the area other than ours. They said several of the children were in fact extremely critical and needed surgery as soon as possible. I did tell them that we could supply the entire surgical team and that we would cover their expenses to come to the Dominican Republic. They discussed it with the patient’s families and they agreed. We flew them into Santa Domingo from Georgetown Guyana, and met them at the airport. We then provided a bus out to our site and Jimani. I must admit that we all bonded together and what a wonderful group of parents and children that we got to know. We had issues with blood so we had to make multiple trips back-and-forth to the blood bank in Santo Domingo. Also we had some equipment that was delayed in customs and Santo Domingo. We overcame all that.

Our first case was Neverland Paul it was a beautiful young Guyon child with complex heart disease. I’ve drawn a schematic of her congenial heart disease. He was very limited what she could do and quite symptomatic. On the day of surgery, we prayed for her along with her mother and son of my partners. I was really so overcome with joy that I wept and I’m sure that did not build the confidence of living in mother or Len. We had an outstanding staff of talented surgeons and anesthesiologist as well as nursing care. The procedure went beautifully and one can look at the postoperative patient and the many smiles that she in gendered from being such a brave young girl with an excellent outcome. she did very well throughout the entire stay in our Jumani hospital and later send a picture and her formal dress at her middle school prom. Just continue to do very well and now leads of normal life without any cardiovascular restrictions. It was just a joy to see her mother’s face and her face after the successful surgery and that she was no longer short of breath or sciatic or any other cardiovascular symptoms and she could in fact, “run and not grow weary“. She did later play sports in Guyana.

It was one of the highlights of my life to see how the Lord blessed a dream of converting a devastated property in the middle of a frontier into a beautiful place of physical and spiritual healing in the name of Jesus Christ in the form of Pediatric heart surgery. We continue to do cases. Here is a picture of the before, and after Jimani project.

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