Maryana and her mom were up bright and early this morning, and for a good reason– it was the day of Maryana’s post-catheterization echo at Sheba hospital. After the cath, the cardiologist was confident that this would be the last echo Maryana needs before going home, so her mom was eager to get to the hospital as soon as possible.
The echo and ECG went quickly, in large part because Maryana was so quiet and cooperative. As I watched her calmly scrolling through videos on her mom’s phone while the echo tech worked, I thought back to her first echo at Sheba, in the ICU after an ambulance trip to the emergency room, when she cried so much that it took sedatives and me, coworker Doro, and her mother all trying to entertain her to keep her quiet enough that the doctor could see anything in the echo. She’s come a long way in the last two and a half months!
The cardiologist had a busy day, so Maryana waited for several hours. She was content to wander the echo clinic waiting room, trying out different seats to find the most comfortable place to settle in and watch videos. She invited me to sit with her for a few minutes, but politely pointed me to a separate train car so she could have hers all to herself.
By the time the cardiologist arrived, Maryana was tired out and had settled down for a nap. It was a quick consultation with the doctor though– everything looked great in the echo and Maryana is cleared to return home!
We brought her straight from the hospital to the airport, where she and her mother boarded a flight home to Kurdistan. The house already feels too quiet without Maryana’s infectious laugh, but we’re glad to send her and her mom home to their eagerly awaiting family.
Just one day after her successful interventional catheterization, our beautiful Maryana is ready to return to our house in Ashdod! She was dressed up in a pretty pink dress for the occasion and was glad to pass the time waiting for the report with Elise, watching videos on her mom’s phone.
Maryana’s cardiologist is optimistic that yesterday’s cath will be the last intervention needed before she can go home to Kurdistan. She needs to have one more echo in a week, at which point if everything looks good, she will be cleared to return home. Please pray for good echo results for her next week.
While waiting for the doctors to pick up Maryana for her Interventional Catheterisation, she was already in a good mood playing with the balloons the nurses gave her. She is a really happy child these days and loves to play with anything that lands in her hands. The same she did in the preparation room for her catheterisation. I waited a while with her and her mother before the doctors came to take her to the OR. While Maryana was having lots of fun, her mother was sitting quietly in the corner watching her daughter. She seemed really worried even, so we didn’t talk that much since we can’t communicate. It must be really hard for her in hospital since she only speaks Kurdish and can’t communicate directly with anybody.
Gladly the procedure went well and Maryana was back in her room after just a few hours. Later in the day she was back awake and chilling in her bed still tired and recovering from the intervention.
Thank you Lord for protecting and healing Maryana. Please keep her and her mother safe while they’re in hospital.
After a few weeks of waiting, Maryana was finally admitted to Sheba hospital today in preparation for what we hope will be her last needed intervention before she can go home. First thing tomorrow morning, she’ll go into the cath lab for a balloon dilation of the right ventricular outflow tract, which is severely narrowed as a result of the hard work her ventricular muscle has been doing for so long.
Maryana was full of energy today and surprised her cardiologist by not crying even a bit for her echo. She spent the waiting time chatting away to me, seemingly not bothered that I understood very little of what she was telling me.
Please pray for Maryana as she goes into her cath tomorrow.
Maryana is still in our house waiting for her catheterization. But Sunday is the day she will be admitted to the hospital. Maryana is one of the last children in our house right now
so her mother becomes more eager to go home as well.
Maryana is a little rascal. She will let you know when she doesn’t like something. She often comes to the staff house where she gets lots of hugs from us and where she can pet our community dog Shevie.
Having Maryana and her mother with us is a blessing. Maryana’s mother is a little more in the background, so I’m excited to get to know her better now that she is alone in the house with us. We ask you to keep Maryana in your prayers.
Maryana is still in our house and we love it. She comes over to the staff house often to see our dog Shevie and to run around in the garden.
Maryana is called in for her catheterization and she will have this in a week and a half. We hope it goes well and that she will be able to go home soon with her mother. For now Maryana and her mother are living separated from the other families because they were both tested positive for Covid. Probably tomorrow they can come out of quarantine and then we can cuddle Maryana again.
Please keep praying for this lovely child and her wonderful mother, who is patient and calm.
Our Maryana is still waiting here at our community house in Ashdod for some news from her doctors at Sheba Hospital, which means probably a date for a catheterization. She and her mother enjoy the time here with us and don’t complain at all about the waiting.
Maryana has changed so much in her time here which is so beautiful to see. Before her surg, she didn’t like playing with the other kids or with us and wasn’t very happy without her mother around. In the last weeks, she opened herself up more and more and loves it now to spend time with us.
She runs at you smiling as soon as you enter the room, and is so happy when she is allowed to come with us to our staff house to see our dog Shevie and play the piano.
Yesterday we went together with her to the park and she didn’t stop running around at the playground. We pray for this cute girl and her patient mother, that Maryana can soon have her next intervention.
Maryana had another echo this morning at Sheba Hospital. She’s getting used to the process now and barely even cried– she’s come a long way since her first echo! As long as her mom was nearby, she was content to watch videos and look at photos of her sister.
Unfortunately, Maryana’s echo showed that the narrowing around her pulmonary valve and arteries is severe enough that she likely needs some intervention before it’s safe for her to go home. Her cardiologist expects that this can be done in a catheterization rather than a surgery, and will discuss her case at the doctors’ conference this week.
Maryana’s mom took this news with a lot of grace and patience. In fact, this characterized the day, as she and Maryana had to wait several hours at the hospital before there was a car that could bring us home. Please pray for continued strength and patience for her and Maryana as they wait for the next steps.
Today was was the first time I spent the morning playing with Maryana. The last few days she seemed very shy when she saw me, but today I was finally made her interact more with me.
Maryana always has cute hairstyles so I imitated her and from that moment on she’s been my best friend. We spent a lot of time just playing with a cardboard box and she even helped me clean a little bit. It’s really good to have her in the house because her smile lightens up your day.
Her next echo appointment will be next Monday and hopefully the doctors will have good news that bring her closer to a discharge back to Kurdistan. Please keep her in your prayers.
After her discharge one week ago, Maryana came back to Sheba Hospital today for an echo. She is a sweet girl and she was happily playing in the echo area while waiting.
She didn’t like the tests she needed, but after a while she calmed down and everything was okay. The echo showed that Maryana has some narrowing in the area around her pulmonary valve and arteries. This is okay for now, and she needs to come back for another echo in two weeks. If nothing changes, she will be discharged to Kurdistan after the next echo, but she does need to have an intervention in the future.
For now we are enjoying Maryana’s company in our community house in Ashdod. Maryana’s mother is very sweet. The two of them are a steady and calm couple in the midst of the liveliness and activities of the other children and mothers.
Beautiful Maryana was discharged from Sheba just in time for the weekend. She’s looking and feeling much better since her surgery and even wanted to walk most of the way from her room to the car in the parking garage. In fact, she’s doing so well that she doesn’t even need any support from medications!
Maryana will have an echo in a week to check up on the recovery of her heart after surgery. In the meantime, she and her mother are finally getting some well-deserved rest at our house in Ashdod.
When we visited Maryana this morning we were surprised and happy to find her already moved to the secondary ICU only two days after her big surgery!
She wasn’t very happy at first as some nurses just finished a blood test but once they were gone we cheered her up with a glove balloon and she stole my glasses.
She was laughing a lot as Bria and I were hunting each other with the balloon and forgot that she was angry at her oxygen sensor a minute ago. We are so thankful for all the steps she is making and seeing her improving.
We wouldn’t be surprised if she will get discharged from the hospital soon and this time we will hopefully be able to be less nervous about having her in our house as her heart problem is fixed now and her oxygen saturation are so good! Thank you God for our little miracle Maryana!
This afternoon, I saw Maryana for the first time since our exciting trip to the emergency room last week. What a difference just a few days makes! I found her sitting up in her bed in the ICU, watching videos on her mom’s phone.
Her lips and fingers are no longer blue and she’s already full of energy just one day after surgery. Her mom brought out a toy for her and she loved taking apart all the pieces and dropping them one by one out of her bed.
Maryana is doing very well after surgery. The doctors removed her oxygen support this morning and her oxygen saturation was 97%–much higher than Thursday’s 9%!
It was so good to get to know Maryana a little better today, especially now that she’s feeling so much better. She has the most beautiful eyes and an adorable grin, which she reluctantly agreed to show off for a photo.
This morning we got surprisingly the message from Maryana’s mother that Maryana is going into surgery right now, only four days after her arrival in Israel. We were amazed how calm her mother stayed even though her daughter went into a big surgery. She stayed calm though the whole waiting time and showed me a lot of pictures of her other five kids back home in Kurdistan and her one grandchild! Maryana is her youngest child and loved so much by her whole family.
Only a few waiting-hours later, around four hours after Maryana went into surgery, her surgeon came out and reported that everything went well and Maryana is stable. One hour later her mother was allowed to see her daughter again and was full of joy to see her so good. With this surgery the doctors could completely fix her heart problems and it will allow her to have a normal life without Tet spills nearly every day.
In the evening I saw that Maryana was already extubated and watching YouTube videos on the phone of her mother, what a great recovery! Thank you God for this successful day for Maryana! Thank you for giving her the chance of getting a normal life!
The paramedics rushed Maryana to Assuta hospital across the street, where with oxygen support and medication, the doctors were able to stabilize her. Maryana’s mother was absolutely incredible the whole time. She didn’t panic, even when her daughter, limp and very blue, was taken from her arms by a stranger. She just stayed calm, followed every instruction given to her, and waited patiently for news from the doctors.
Once Maryana was stabilized and the chaos was beginning to settle a bit, the doctor in the emergency room turned to me and said cheerfully, “Okay so she’s from Kurdistan, what exactly is she doing here?” It’s always a little hard to explain to someone who’s not familiar with Shevet, but the doctor took it all in stride and was excited for the opportunity to call the head cardiologist at Sheba, where Maryana was scheduled for her first appointment this Sunday.
We waited several hours at Assuta for an ambulance to come transfer us to Sheba, where the pediatric ICU was preparing a room. Thank God, Maryana was feeling much better by then and was content to snuggle on her mom’s lap and show me videos of her family at home in Kurdistan. She was intrigued by the IV line in her arm and thought it was pretty funny to give her mom “shots” with the end of it, and was just a little disturbed that she couldn’t fit her shoe over her oxygen sensor.
At the end of a long day, an ambulance arrived and brought us to the ICU at Sheba to a room ready and waiting for her. Maryana was not especially pleased with the situation, and made the cardiologist work extra hard to get good echo images.
Some medicine to sedate her and a few YouTube videos helped, and she finally settled down to sleep, which meant her exhausted mother could get some rest too.
Maryana needs surgery soon to repair her heart defect so she will not continue to have episodes like this.
The cardiologists will meet on Sunday and discuss her case, and afterwards we will have a better idea of the next steps for her. Please pray for her and her mother as they settle into life in the ICU and wait for surgery.
This evening we welcomed our new Kurdish child Maryana. Luisa and I picked her and her wonderful mom up at the airport and brought them here to Ashdod where they could get some rest and good Kurdish food that the other moms prepared for them.
Maryana directly started playing with the other kids and seems to feel comfortable here. Her mom already knew two of the other moms so she was glad to come to a house where not everyone and everything is new.
Maryana turned just two years old a few weeks ago and is diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot. This means that she also has frequent episodes of de-saturation and is turning blue for a couple of minutes. Please pray that in her time in our house, Maryana will stay stable and safe! Let us pray for a successful treatment for our cute girl!
Maryana and her mom were up bright and early this morning, and for a good reason– it was the day of Maryana’s post-catheterization echo at Sheba hospital. After the cath, the cardiologist was confident that this would be the last echo Maryana needs before going home, so her mom was eager to get to the hospital as soon as possible.
The echo and ECG went quickly, in large part because Maryana was so quiet and cooperative. As I watched her calmly scrolling through videos on her mom’s phone while the echo tech worked, I thought back to her first echo at Sheba, in the ICU after an ambulance trip to the emergency room, when she cried so much that it took sedatives and me, coworker Doro, and her mother all trying to entertain her to keep her quiet enough that the doctor could see anything in the echo. She’s come a long way in the last two and a half months!
The cardiologist had a busy day, so Maryana waited for several hours. She was content to wander the echo clinic waiting room, trying out different seats to find the most comfortable place to settle in and watch videos. She invited me to sit with her for a few minutes, but politely pointed me to a separate train car so she could have hers all to herself.
By the time the cardiologist arrived, Maryana was tired out and had settled down for a nap. It was a quick consultation with the doctor though– everything looked great in the echo and Maryana is cleared to return home!
