Mending Hearts

Today, Team Heart performed two more successful surgeries. At top left, Jean-Paul gets ready for his surgery, an aortic valve replacement, this morning.

Team Heart members participating in the surgery include, at top right, Katie Morrison, RN; middle row, Radhika Dinavahi, MD; perfusionists Mike McAdams and Amy Patel; bottom from left, Barry Shopnick, PA-C, John Connell, MD, and Prem Shekar, MD.

The red Team Heart caps were made for us by our friend and colleague Nancy Carrigan, RN, of BWH Neurosurgery. Thank you Nancy!

From Chip Bolman, MD, Chief of Cardiac Surgery

We are off and running.

We did our first surgery Saturday, a 25 year-old with an ASD, a congenital defect in the septum between the upper chambers of the heart. He did very well- extubated very early, came out of the ICU on day 1, and was surrounded by his family.

Today, we performed two more surgeries: an aortic valve replacement for post-endocarditis aortic insufficiency, and a mitral commissurotomy for rheumatic mitral stenosis in an adolescent. Both went very well. Read the full post.

Pictured: Ceeya and Chip Bolman

Genocide Mourning Week Begins Tomorrow

During our time here, most team members have visited or plan to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, which overlooks a mass grave of 250,000 victims of the genocide. The museum, filled with the photographs of victims and haunting images and descriptions of the genocide, serves as a permanent memorial to the victims and a place for survivors to grieve.

Tomorrow, the country begins its annual genocide mourning week April 7 to 13 in remembrance of the estimated one million people who lost their lives during the 1994 genocide.

Yesterday’s issue of The New Times, a daily newspaper in Rwanda, quoted U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon: “May [the victims] rest in peace; my thoughts go to the survivors. May their courage and resilience serve as an inspiration to all of us.”

This year’s commemoration theme is “Let’s commemorate Genocide while fighting its ideology, rendering support to survivors and striving for development.”