Romania Sends Us A Chance To Help Spokane Doctors To Find Out If Boy’s Heart Condition Treatable

Flavius Lazar was carried off the airplane by Spokane volunteers teary with relief late Sunday.

His laugh arrived about an hour later.

As balloons bobbed and television lights beamed, the 6-year-old boy, shoulders hunched and eyes downcast, endured bearhugs and teddy bears from Spokane people trying to save his life.

Since Celeste Shaw learned of the Romanian boy’s heart condition in October, the co-president of Northwest Medical Teams International’s Spokane chapter has worked to bring him here for surgery.

An hour after landing, Flavius was offered his first taste of America: peanut butter and jelly on white bread. “Fresh peanut butter,” Shaw enthused. “Look, you get the first knifeful.” Silence.

Holiday Oreos with red cream in the center washed down with RC Cola? Silence.

Not until a jar of M&Ms crashed to the kitchen floor with a tremendous chatter did Flavius throw back his head and laugh. He chortled, ate M&Ms and blew bubbles through a soap ring.

Then he stopped, his ivory skin ashen. The tips of his fingernails and his lips turned the slightest shade of blue.

“This child needs this surgery to survive,” said Shaw. “This is his life.”

Today, a cardiac catheterization will show doctors whether open-heart surgery is possible. If the damage is too great, he would need a heart-lung transplant - an impossibility at this point. In that case, he would go home untreated.

Flavius was born with a condition known as tetralogy of Fallot. The right chamber of his heart is enlarged and his pulmonary artery and blood flow to the lungs are reduced. He also has a hole between the left and right sides of his heart.

Pediatric cardiologist Welzie Allen can’t remember a child Flavius’ age with that condition. Most of the two dozen similar heart defects Allen sees annually are treated in infancy.

“He’s five years past where I would have finished all the repairs,” Allen said.

Romanian doctors inserted a shunt in his heart at age 3 to help his ailing organ. But a handful of other children who suffered similar defects died after further surgery in Romania.

Desperate, Aurica Lazar, 31, left the Transylvanian village of Beclan with her only son. They spent more than 30 hours on trains and planes to reach Spokane. Her husband, a truck driver, and daughter, 2, remained at home.

Lazar speaks almost no English. Traveling with translator Sorina Darabantiu, Northwest Medical Teams program director in Romania, she had many questions: What bedding did she need for the hospital? What kind of clothing? She didn’t even assume American homes had hot water.

Sunday night, entering Shaw’s home, she found a scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life” with a ceiling-high Christmas tree, glowing candles and wrapped presents.

“I washed the sheets twice so I could ‘Downy’ them twice,” Shaw admitted. “I don’t even do that for my own family.”

Shaw, a cardiac nurse at Deaconess Medical Center, enlisted the help of Northwest, Healing the Children, Deaconess, cardiologists and volunteers like Dr. LeRoy and Irene Byrd to help the family the next several weeks.

But her role primarily is to spoil Flavius.

“He threw french fries at lunch, ran away in the toy store; he’s a boy,” she said, delighted.

Allen and Dr. Jack Leonard hope to operate this week. The boy is 40 pounds of sturdiness, which works in his favor. But he is also a long way from home.

At the Heart Institute of Spokane on Monday, as Shaw and his mother slid long johns down his pale legs in a crowded examining room, tears silently filled his eyes. Later, as an echocardiograph showed in vivid colors how blood pools in his heart, his tears flowed again. His eyes darted from face to face, searching for his mother, who smiled at him reassuringly.

“You are his lucky star,” Darabantiu told Dr. Allen.

“He would not have survived in Romania after the surgery.”

But Allen was cautious.

“We have to be honest, this isn’t a walk-free. There is always a risk, but I think the risk is less here.”

Listening, the boy’s mother nodded. In the hallway, after a morning of smiling and nodding, she finally stopped, overwhelmed.

The boy slipped his hand in hers and said, “Come on.”

She turned away, blinking until her eyes were dry, then beamed him a reassuring smile and took his hand.

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