The Heart of Ukraine

Eva Li, a student at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine spent the summer in Kharkiv, Ukraine volunteering with International Children’s Heart Foundation, a non-profit organization which sends teams of professional heart surgeons, nurses and other medical staff to travel around the world and perform cardiac surgeries on kids with congenital heart diseases. "It was a very cool and valuable experience for me. I learned a lot, saw a few very impressive surgeries and spent most of my time in ICU watching monitors and looking after sick children. I even got to practice some OMM on these little babies. The little boy I am holding had hypoplastic heart syndrome, which is an incompatible with life malformation of the heart. He was only two-weeks old. The ICHF team performed a very difficult heart reconstructive surgery called the Norwood procedure on him. It was the first time this procedure had ever been done in the Ukraine. As far as I know, the boy is still alive and underwent one more surgery in the Fall. His mother named him Genghis after a great Mongolian warrior Genghis Khan of whom she dreamed in her sleep before delivery."