12/28/05 - Posted from the Daily Record newsroom

Family opens home, hearts to Iraqi boy's medical plight

From Baghdad to Morris Plains: After heart surgery, 14-year-old wants to sightsee

BY ROB SEMAN
DAILY RECORD

DENVILLE -- Unlike most 14-year-old boys, Asaid Abed said he doesn't have an idea of what he'd like to do when he grows up.

He's not even sure what he'd like to do in the next two weeks.

For most of his life, those ambitions were afterthoughts in the face of simply surviving, as a set of congenital heart defects robbed him of his health. The little chance of treatment of surgery in his Baghdad, Iraq home also robbed his family of hope.

Tuesday was a turnabout day, however.

Asaid and three other Iraqi children left Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx after undergoing open-heart-surgery. Now, doctors said, Abed should have a full life --and all the time he needs to decide what to do with it.

Asaid and his father have been staying with members of two Rotary Clubs in Morris County and chatted with a reporter on Tuesday afternoon.

"I don't know what I want to see," Asaid said through an interpreter. "But I want to see more" sights in the metropolitan area.

When they arrived in the United States, the Iraqi children and their parents were put up in homes of local Rotarians in the metropolitan area.

Asaid and his father were taken in by Morris Plains Rotarian Larry Ripley.

For Ripley, 56, a single father whose adult children had moved out before he bought his home in Morris Plains, Asaid was the second child he took in from the Gift of Life program, and he said he was all too happy to do it.

"Honestly, it's very enjoyable and a lot of fun," Ripley said. "I learn a lot of things about people from other countries and other cultures."

Ripley said he and his guests communicated by pointing at phrases in a book.

"We would laugh at each other's mispronunciations,"Ripley said.

Kitchen gratitude

The family's gratitude was apparent right away, Ripley said.

"When they first got here, I had a sink full of dirty dishes,"Ripley said.

He then left to buy food for Asaid and his father and himself, only to return to find that Saleh had washed the dishes for him in thanks.

Politics surrounding the war in Iraq didn't become an issue, Saleh and Ripley said.

"It crossed my mind, but it didn't stop me because I was on a mission to save my child," Saleh said.

Ripley believes the program will do more to promote the oft-overlooked acts of goodwill the United States has done in the region.

"We like to think of this program as an ambassadorial program as much as a medical program," Ripley said.

Asaid and Saleh stayed with Ripley until Dec. 19, when he went to the hospital for treatment on the 21st. He was the last of the children to receive treatment, according to the hospital's Web site.

Instead of returning to Ripley's home, Asaid and Saleh went to stay at the home of Denville resident Aref Assaf, also a Rotary Club member in that town.

Assaf, who is Palestinian-born and speaks Arabic, could better communicate with the guests. He has also hosted ailing visitors from other countries while they receive treatment in the United States.

"It's such a beautiful effort," Assaf said.

Within hours of arriving at Assaf's home on Tuesday, Asaid was playing video games with Assaf's children in their spacious basement. Video games had become Asaid's only pastime in Iraq, after not being allowed to play outdoors with other children because of his frailty.

Assaf and Ripley said they plan to take the father and son to New York City to see sights like the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty.

But on Tuesday, it was enough for Saleh to see his son enjoying himself again, and with a new lease on life.

"Words cannot describe the happiness in my heart," said his father, Saleh. "I am thrilled."

Iraq complications

Before the war, under the regime of Saddam Hussein, such procedures were available in Iraq to one of two classes of people there.

"The very rich and the rest of us are poor," Asaid's father, Saleh, a member of the military police in Baghdad, said.

"We were told not to even bother to have the procedure performed on him, that he was too old," Saleh said.

After the war, the class problem remained, though it became moot. By then, most of the best doctors had fled the country, Saleh said.

As his son's condition worsened, Saleh said his hope had begun to fade. Asaid has not attended school in three years because he has become so weak that doctors there feared that any germs from other children might kill him. He soon became physically exhausted to walk.

"That was the worst part," Saleh said. "Watching our child die in front of us."

Then, the program seeking children with birth defects for treatment was publicized by the U.S. military throughout Iraq. Saleh jumped at the chance.

After initial tests, Asaid was chosen to go to Amman, Jordan, where he was again tested by doctors there. Soon after, they were called back to Jordan to get their visas.

The next stop was America.

Hospital outreach

Through its Operation Iraqi Hearts, the hospital has performed such operations on more than 500 children around the world in the past 15 years.

"When you look into a heart, it's not a Muslim heart, it's not a Jewish heart. We are all the same," Dr. Samuel Weinstein, a pediatric heart surgeon, said Dec. 16 upon the arrival of the four Muslim children: three boys, Wsam Rabea, 11, Abed, 14, and Sivar Mohammed, 6; and a girl, Ashjan Khaled, 12.

Rotary Club's Gift of Life International helped arrange for them to go to Jordan for treatment. Doctors there determined they needed surgery in the United States.

The Rotary program paid for the hospital stays, along with the Rachel Cooper Foundation. An open-heart operation costs as much as $100,000.

Asaid was born with a partial atrio-ventricular canal, meaning the dividing membranes that form the four chambers of a normal heart had holes in them, circulating too much blood through the boy's lungs. The boy also had substantial damage to his bicuspid valve and mitral valve, Ripley said.

Asaid was not diagnosed with the defect until age eight, about the same time his father said he stopped growing, and actually began to weaken and shrink, though his heart is larger than that of an adult. Today, the 14-year-old only stands a little over four feet tall.

To correct the defect, surgeons crafted membranes out of Gore-Tex and repaired the valves of his heart

01/22/06 - Posted from the Daily Record newsroom

Miracle mission ends with a grateful heart

Iraqi boy leaves Morris for home after lifesaving surgery 'Now I have great energy'

BY ROB SEMAN
DAILY RECORD

MORRIS PLAINS -- Asaid Abed boarded a plane for his home in Baghdad on Saturday much the same as he had a month ago when he arrived in New York City -- with his heart swelled.

The difference: When he arrived, it had been swollen to the size of a basketball with blood, unable to pump out the fluid because of a hole between the organ's upper and lower chambers. That took a toll that one could easily see in the pale, shrunken and lethargic 14-year-old boy.

On Saturday, weeks after a surgery that repaired the heart defect, Asaid's heart was now swollen with hope. And it showed in the boy's newfound smile.

"When I came, I was really exhausted and tired," Asaid said with the help of a translator. "Now I have great energy and can't wait to try it out."

"The first thing I want to do is go back to school," Asaid said.

He'll likely have plenty of time to figure out where he goes from there, said Dr. Samuel Weinstein, the surgeon who oversaw the operations on Asaid and four other Iraqi children with congenital heart defects who were brought to Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

Three boys -- Wsam Rabea, 11, Abed, 14, and Sivar Mohammed, 6 -- and a girl -- Ashjan Khaled, 12 -- were flown to the United States through the Gift of Life, a humanitarian arm of Rotary International. The program brings children overseas to the United States for medical procedures not available in their own countries.

A fifth child, Ali Abid Ali, 14, whose arrival was delayed, also underwent surgery this month.

Asaid made his final visit to Weinstein's office for a checkup on Tuesday and looked the best he had since the frail boy arrived.

"I told the father he should definitely make arrangements for him to go to school," Weinstein said. That earned Weinstein a smile from Asaid's father, Saleh, as well as an embrace and kiss on the cheek -- a customary greeting or expression of gratitude among Iraqi men.

"I've gotten a lot of kisses this month," Weinstein said.

Left unchecked, Asaid's defect likely would have caused congestive heart failure, or would have sent too much blood to his lungs, causing irreversible lung damage.

To fix the problem, surgeons used a patch made from Gore-Tex and material from Asaid's own pericardium, the membrane around the heart. They also repaired a damaged mitral valve.

Asaid's heart shrunk to half its size by the end of the procedure. Today, it is about the size of a normal human heart.

Arrangements will be made to have the children visit a pediatric cardiologist in Amman, Jordan, each year, or until Iraq becomes stable enough to lure back medical professionals.

The scar on his chest no longer itches, but Asaid still is getting used to his new heartbeat.

"Before, my heartbeat was much faster," the boy said. "Now I feel it is much slower and I hope it is normal."

While recovering, Asaid and his father stayed with Morris Plains Rotary Club member Larry Ripley and Denville Rotarian Aref Assaf. With Assaf, a Palestinian native who speaks Arabic, communicating was easier for Asaid and Saleh. For Ripley, it was a learning experience for all.

An Arabic-to-English translation book was kept on Ripley's coffee table. When that wouldn't do, a list of translators was never far from reach. But most of the communication, Ripley said, took place through gestures. That seemed to have sufficed.

"We've become really good friends," Ripley said. "There's been a great deal of communication of the eyes between Saleh and me."

While Ripley went to work, Asaid was content with a Playstation that Ripley borrowed, while Saleh spent his time either watching television or people through the window.

Their excursions outside the houses were far less ordinary. Saleh and Asaid and the other children and their fathers were ferried to events such as the circus and landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty by representatives of the hospital and Gift of Life.

Each trip had its share of memories. Saleh said he was taken aback as he stood on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, looking out "to see the vastness of the city."

The street-level view was just as breathtaking.

"He was kind of amazed to see the different colors and backgrounds (of people) and the size of the city," Assaf said.

While every description of the city and New Jersey was peppered with the word "beauty," the conservative, pious father also believes that American society is somewhat too liberal.

"Even in the hospital, there was too much openness," he said, with the help of Hala Al-Saraf, one of the translators for the group.

As they boarded the ferry for the Statue of Liberty at Battery Park, Asaid and most of the children kept their eyes fixed on the Hudson River.

"He said he has been three times next to a lake, but never in a boat," Hala translated for Asaid.

The children were in store for an even bigger treat. Capt. Peter Giblin allowed the children to take the wheel of the ship, and, following his directions, steered the ship to the statue dock.

The boat ride turned out to be a bit more fascinating -- and relaxed -- than the tour of the statue itself. A guide from the National Park Service rushed the group along its tour, pressed for time before the general admission crowd was to be let in.

Wsam Rabea, who underwent surgery because of a reduced blood flow, turned and giggled as small blasts of wind from the General Electric EntryScan3 blew a young woman's blonde hair around.

"It's different when people check people by hand (in Iraq) and here they use machines,"Hala said, explaining the children's fascination.

The children understood that the machines were a precaution, even if not specifically as post-9/11 security features that included closing off everything above the statue's pedestal. The winding staircases leading to the top of the statue now were visible to the children and their fathers only by looking up through Plexiglas inside the pedestal.

The quick visit still seemed to have an effect on the children. Ashjan, who studied English for three years, told Hala that she'd like to learn more.

The children and their fathers felt a little more at ease as they sat down for a meal to celebrate the Muslim holiday, Eid Aldaha, at the Arab-American Family Support Center in Brooklyn.

"We wanted to give them support, make them feel at home,"said Maha Attieh, an official from the center.

While the surgeries seemed to have immediate positive effects for the children, it took longer to ease the dour outlook their fathers had long ago adopted. But as their children grew stronger, that, too, changed.

Khalid, Ashjan's father, said he and his wife named their daughter with the Iraqi word for "sorrow," because of her heart condition. Now, he plans on renaming his daughter Farah -- the word for "happiness."

"Because her heart is fixed,"Khalid said.

The kindness shown them will be the most enduring memory, Saleh said.

"What will always touch us deeply are the never-ending smiles from people who offered their assistance," he said.