Texas Children's International Reaches Out To Patients In Foreign Lands

At first, Roxanne Myers didn't think much about her baby's low body weight. After all, she had been a tiny baby herself. Her outlook changed, though, when little 5-month-old Shomari began to have trouble breathing.

"I started to get concerned because he seemed to be healthy," Myers says, recalling the first few months of Shomari's life. "He was an active baby, but then he suffered from labored breathing."

It was during a checkup soon after the breathing problems started that Shomari's pediatrician discovered a heart murmur. While the news would be cause for concern for any parent, it was even more difficult to handle for Myers, since finding a heart specialist in her home country of Jamaica could be a challenge.

"We were referred to a doctor in our area who has a program that allows patients with heart ailments to receive treatment in the United States," says Myers. "We were very fortunate to be able to get help at Texas Children's Hospital."

Myer's prayers were answered knowing she and Shomari were on their way to Texas Children's Hospital, but there were still some obstacles ahead, most notably a trip from their hometown of Spanish Town to Houston.

"Making arrangements for a hospital stay can be a trying time for any family, but even more so for a family that's traveling thousands of miles from home," says Jim Levermann, president of Texas Children's International, part of the Texas Children's Hospital Integrated Delivery System. "We try to make the experience go as smoothly as possible by providing a wide range of services and assistance."

The team at Texas Children's International breaks down language barriers and assists with logistics, such as transportation and accommodations. Most importantly, staff members ensure that parents and caregivers understand they are part of the team that will help make their child well, a concept that might not be the approach to health care in their own country.

In Shomari's case, it was the surgical precision of Dr. Charles Fraser, chief of congenital heart surgery at Texas Children's, that helped mend his tiny heart. One month after arriving at Texas Children's, Shomari underwent a six-hour operation to treat Tetralogy of Fallot - a combination of four different heart defects.

"Knowing that Shomari had such a serious heart problem was overwhelming," Myers says. "Jamaican doctors are not trained to perform the surgery he needed. We were able to get the expertise we needed by going to Texas Children's."

- STEVE SIEVERT

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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