Grapevine: Heartwarming stories

A chance meeting in an emergency room; Musician plays tunes on the street during Tel Aviv's mass demonstration.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Emek Medical Center 521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Emek Medical Center 521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
■ In the midst of all the demonstrations, doctors’ strikes and demands for better working conditions and higher salaries come two inspiring medical stories, one from Tanzania and the other from Rehovot. Four year-old Laurencia Simon, the daughter of two farmers who live in a mud hut without electricity or running water, has become the first child in Tanzania to successfully undergo pediatric open heart surgery. She was diagnosed two years ago with congenital heart disease, but Tanzania lacked the infrastructure and training to perform open heart surgery on such a young child. After hearing on the radio that a Save a Child’s Heart medical team had arrived from Israel, Laurencia’s mother, Paulina Bujiku, decided that the only way for the little girl to live was to be treated by the Save a Heart team. Surgery was performed last Friday and Laurencia appears to be recovering well.
“It required incredible team work to create an operating room that could meet our needs,” said Dr. Lior Sasson, chief surgeon of Save a Child’s Heart and head of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Department at Wolfson Medical Center.
Save a Child’s Heart doctors and staff worked in collaboration with the staff at the Bugando hospital in Mwanza, Tanzania, and Kasbian Nuriel Chirich, honorary Israel consul in Tanzania, to prepare for this moment. All the hard work paid off, as children with heart disease came from across Tanzania to be examined.
“There are about 200 sick Tanzanian children who will be examined by the Save a Child’s Heart team,” said Dr. Akiva Tamir, chief cardiologist at Save a Child’s Heart and the head of the Pediatric Cardiology Unit at Wolfson Medical Center. “I am examining over 20 children every day and we all are committed to doing whatever it takes to help them and save their lives.” Some 10 pediatric heart surgeries took place this week in Tanzania.
The other children who need operations will be flown to Wolfson Medical Center in the coming year – with all expenses paid by Save a Child’s Heart.
Once the surgeries are completed 13 volunteers and supporters for Save a Child’s Heart will climb Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest peak, to raise $1 million to save the lives of another 100 children in Africa suffering from heart disease.
Among the climbers is Dr. Godwin Godfrey from Tanzania. He has been in Israel for the past three years training with Save a Child’s Heart at the Wolfson Medical Center. Godfrey assisted last Friday in the historic pediatric open heart surgery and took part in all the subsequent surgeries this week.
“It’s extraordinary,” said Godfrey. “I finally see my people benefit from all my hard work. I now know that when I complete my training and return to Tanzania, I will be treating these children and doing everything I can to give them a second chance at life.”
■ The second story is about two adults who were unaware of each other’s existence until they met in the operating room at Kaplan Medical Center. Tatiana Idlin, 59, had been rushed from her home in Ashdod to Kaplan for urgent surgery.
While lying on the operating table, she heard the physicians around her saying that it was essential to call in Dr. Simnowski for consultation. On learning his name her heart missed a beat. The surname of Dr. Anatoly Simnowski was so familiar to her.
When he came into the operating room, she insisted on speaking to him before being prepared for surgery. She told him that her maiden name was Simnowski. It transpired that they were cousins, but had no prior knowledge of each other.
Idlin had come to Israel 21 years earlier, almost totally ignorant of anything pertaining to her father’s family. Simnowski was aware that she existed somewhere, but had never met her and had not made any effort to trace her. When she spoke to him she asked if he came from a certain city in the Ural Mountains. When he nodded, she understood that they were related. Her grandfather and the doctor’s father were brothers. It was an extremely emotional moment and Idlin began to cry, especially because Simnowski bears a striking resemblance to her grandfather.
■ Shlomo Artzi turned the Tel Aviv mass demonstration on Saturday night from a protest to a happening.
Participants temporarily cast aside their grievances to ecstatically sway and jump to the rhythm of his music. Not everyone was happy about Artzi’s role in the demonstration. Interviewed on Sunday on Israel Radio, Vicki Knafo, who almost eight years ago led a march of single mothers from Mitzpe Ramon to Jerusalem, where they too set up a tent city, was totally opposed to singers and musicians entertaining the crowd.
“It’s not a celebration, it’s a demonstration,” she said. “It’s not the way to protest against the system.”
Knafo said that the good thing that she had detected this time was the spirit of unity. The people who had enthusiastically joined her bandwagon, she recalled, were quickly at odds with each other and the rivalries and hostilities had a negative impact on her campaign. She too had asked for a roundtable to explore complaints and to try to find solutions, she said, but nothing had come of it. Now she has joined in the fight against price increases of basic necessities. Last time she fought Binyamin Netanyahu, he was finance minister. Now he’s prime minister, but in the intervening years, according to Knafo, his economic policies have remained constant.