Vasco's next chapter: God makes a family

The Wee Man isn't so wee any more.

Vasco Sylvester, the 10-year-old boy from Malawi who Sun-Times readers helped bring to Chicago for lifesaving heart surgery this spring has grown three inches -- and three shoe sizes -- since he left Hope Children's Hospital in June.

His heart is working perfectly. His strength, vocabulary, confidence and muscles grow every day. He can run and jump and swim and play soccer (he's a striker) for the first time in his young life.

Many of you have written to me over the last three months asking about Vasco -- how he is and where he is.

My family has some happy news we want to share with you.

With the cooperation of the Malawian and U.S. governments, we are in the process of adopting Vasco.

He lives with us in California, started fourth grade last month at the local grammar school, and his soccer team, the Fat Pandas, are 2-1.

Vasco is happy, healthy, flourishing and has a family who will love and care for him for the rest of his life. Looking at him slide-tackle a player twice his size or belly-ride a big wave on his surfboard, it's hard to believe this is the same sick little boy, who lived on the streets alone after his parents died of AIDS, whom we met on the side of the road in Malawi two years ago next week.




The joy and blessing this child is in my life and the life of my family and extended circle of friends is something I don't think I could ever adequately articulate.

Your contributions helped clothe and feed him in Malawi, and since his arrival here, have helped with doctor bills and to pay for the expensive heart medication he needs to take daily for at least another few months.

If Vasco could thank you all personally, he would. So I'll do it for him.

My thanks to you, dear readers, in helping give Vasco -- and his mom -- a new life, is as deep as my heart is capable of feeling.



This mitzvah was the work of many, many hands.

And it started with a raffle ticket.

On April 29, 2006, I got a call from Tom Derdak, the director of Chicago's Global Alliance for Africa, telling me that I'd won a two-week all-expenses-paid trip for two to East Africa. A month earlier, I had bought a handful of tickets from my former colleague Debra Pickett and forgotten about them. I'd never won anything. Not even a door prize.

So the news about the trip to Africa was a thunderbolt of good luck. Eighteen months later, while I was working on a book about the subject of grace, my husband and I decided to take that trip and added on another two weeks to see more of the African continent.

We decided to travel to Malawi to visit a charity that worked with street kids which we had been supporting for a few years. We were in Blantyre, Malawi, for less than 72 hours and met dozens of street children. The last one we met, after a long day of visiting with kids at a drop-in center, was Vasco.

I can still hear his squeaky little voice yell, "I'm coming," in Chichewa, his native language, when we walked into the dirt compound where he lived with some extended family. I can still feel the violent pounding of his heart shaking his fragile little body -- and mine -- as he sat on my lap.

Before anyone told us what was wrong with him, my husband and I knew that he was gravely ill. He had a hole in his heart. He was dying.



When I wrote about him for the first time in the Sun-Times almost two years ago, three hospitals in Chicago came forward and offered to treat him pro bono if we could just get him to the States.

It took 18 months to get him here, but on April 29, 2009, Vasco arrived at O'Hare -- less than 4 feet tall and 42 pounds. He had malaria, was carrying tuberculosis (though, thankfully, he is not infected himself), and had three parasites. After his doctors at Hope got rid of all his extra "baggage," he underwent successful open-heart surgery to repair the large ventricular septal defect in his little lion's heart on June 10.

It was the night of the surgery, while Vasco was still unconscious and on a ventilator, that my husband and I looked across his frail body and just knew.

This boy was our son.

At that moment, we decided we'd do whatever we needed to do to make sure he would always be taken care of, always have a family, always have a home and the chance to become everything that he can be.

But the choice was Vasco's. With the help of our Malawian friend and native Chichewa speaker in Oak Park, Dr. Kamana Mbekeani, we asked him if we could have the honor of being his parents.

He said yes.



We weren't sure if it would even be possible to adopt from Malawi. Anyone familiar with Madonna's story of getting her son, David, and daughter, Mercy, out of Malawi knows a bit about how difficult it can be.

But doors opened. Bridges appeared. Angels came to guide us on both sides of the Atlantic.

Vasco's surviving aunt and uncle gave their blessings for Vasco to join our family, and, as is the custom, so did the headman of his ancestral village. The U.S. government extended his visa until next August. We're in the process of scheduling a home visit by a U.S. welfare agency, and then the three of us will travel back to Malawi for a court hearing on our adoption petition.

We're not sure how all of that will come to pass, but we trust that God will make a way, just as we believe God brought this child into our lives.

A winning ticket. A surprise. Divine intervention. Staggering grace.

I'm a mother for the first time.

My heart is fuller than I could ever have imagined.

And Vasco's is whole again, at last.

'I was a stranger, and you took me in.'

The ancient Greeks believed that hospitality was sacred. They called it xenia, the word from which we get “genial” in English.

Showing hospitality to strangers and those far from home was a form of worship to the god Zeus, who was the Greek god of, among other things, travelers.

In the religiosity of xenia, the host was obliged to care for the guests, the guests were required to respect the host, and when the guests left, the host gave them a gift as an expression of what an honor it had been to host them.

Hospitality is a spiritual discipline. In India, for instance, there is a saying: atithi devo bhava, meaning, “the guest is God.” Likewise, in his great Rule, St. Benedict emphasized the importance of hospitality in a life of faith, saying, “Let everyone that comes be received as Christ.”

While the Ronald McDonald House in Oak Lawn, across the street from Hope Children’s Hospital, is not a house of worship, nor does it align itself with any spiritual tradition, it is very much a sacred space, extending hospitality in a powerful and tangible way to the weary families of sick children.

When my husband and I brought Vasco to Hope for heart surgery June 10, the thought of staying steps away at the McDonald house had never crossed our mind. We figured we’d take turns sleeping on a chair in Vasco’s hospital room while the other one drove home to Oak Park for the night.

But at the end of a marathon couple of days at the hospital with Vasco, the 10-year-old AIDS orphan from Malawi we’ve been hosting since April while he undergoes life-saving treatment at Hope, one of his nurses asked us, “Why don’t you stay at the McDonald house?”

A quick call to Kelly Evans, the McDonald house manager, and we had a room. A private room, with two beds and its own bathroom, for as long as we needed it. It was hard to step away from Vasco’s bedside, but walking across the street for a quick nap or a shower was much easier than driving 45 minutes in traffic each way.

I had no expectations when I walked in to the McDonald house late one afternoon, exhausted and carrying only my cell phone. Kevin Kramer, an assistant house manager, met me at the door, shook my hand, asked me if I wanted a cool bottle of water, and guided me to a wood-paneled room with comfy green velvet chairs while he went to get our paperwork.

The McDonald house in Oak Lawn is the fourth McDonald house built in the Chicago area. It opened on Dec. 15, 2008, and is very much a house — not an antiseptic institution or an impersonal hotel. It’s beautiful, well-appointed, and inviting.

Kramer gave me a tour of the 16-bedroom house set back from 93rd Street by a circular driveway and a stand of old-growth trees. There are two wings of the house facing the street, which the architect designed to look like arms reaching out, welcoming families in, he said. I started to get teary.

When he walked me into the kitchen — a fully stocked, enormous kitchen with wood floors and expansive counters, pantries lining the walls and several stainless steel refrigerators with “community” written on them — I began to cry.

The McDonald house people had thought of everything a stressed-out family far from home might need or want. All the house asks is a $10 donation per night, if you can afford it.

I could not have felt more welcome. I could not have been more relieved and blessed to be there, in the company of other families who were going through similar trials, although ours was short by comparison.

One night, my husband walked back to the house from the hospital — a walk Vasco could watch from the window of his intensive care room — around midnight and ran into another father in the kitchen, both of them eating home-cooked leftovers from the community fridge that is stocked daily with meals from volunteer groups. This night it was taco salad. They got to talking and the other man explained that his family had been living at the house for six months. His son, an infant, was born with a heart defect, not unlike Vasco, and has undergone numerous surgeries.

There were other families who were repeat visitors, coming to stay for a few days or a week or a month at a time every few months while their child endured surgery or chemotherapy or testing or rehabilitation.

I didn’t know most of their stories, but I recognized that look in their eyes. The weariness, the fear, the hope and the love.

When Vasco was released from the hospital on Wednesday, we took him to see the house for himself. “Oh . . . beautiful!” he squealed, pointing at the fireplace and the tall spiral staircase that form the hearth and the heart of the house.

Before we left the house, Evans invited Vasco to choose a gift from their immense toy closet. He chose a Tonka helicopter.

The McDonald houses will forever be my charity of choice for donations large and small. A visit to www.rmhccni.org lists all sorts of opportunities to help, from collecting pop tabs to a wish list of things the house needs — plastic to-go containers, gallon jugs of vinegar, portable DVD players, boxes of cereal.

They are doing God’s work. We — and so many others — were strangers and they took us in.

Wee Man's Heart is Whole Again

Thank you, Lord, for what you've done for me.
Thank you, Lord, for what you're doing now.
Thank you, Lord, for ev'ry little thing.
Thank you, Lord, for you made me sing.

— Bob Marley, "Thank You Lord"

The hole in Vasco Sylvester's heart isn't there anymore. On Wednesday, in a three-hour operation, surgeons at Hope Children's Hospital in Oak Lawn, using a piece of white Gore-Tex, patched the quarter-size hole that had been there since Vasco was born.

The doctors also removed an extra membrane between the top and bottom chambers of his heart and stitched closed another tiny hole at the top of his aorta. Now, thanks to the miraculous handiwork of his surgical team -- Dr. Michel Ilbawi, Dr. Chawki El Zein and Dr. Anastasios Polimenakos -- his heart is working as God intended.

In the last few days since surgery, each time I've looked at Vasco, the 10-year-old Malawian AIDS orphan my husband and I met nearly two years ago while traveling in Africa, a line from Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" has echoed in my mind:

"The heart is a resilient little muscle."

By the time Vasco was wheeled in to pediatric intensive care at Hope an hour after surgeons closed the four-inch-long incision they'd made in his chest, that resilient little muscle, which had been enlarged from 10 years of working overtime to pump blood despite the huge leak, already had begun to shrink to a normal size.

As Vasco lay in bed, tubes attached to nearly every appendage, I put my hand on his chest. Gone was the violent thunk-thunking of his wounded heart, the rabbit-like beat that violently shook his body even at rest. In its place was the normal butterfly fluttering heartbeat of a child at rest. And at peace.

Vasco has a fierce spirit, like a lion. He's small, but he's amazingly strong. A day after surgery, doctors at Hope, where Wee Man is being treated free of charge, removed the breathing tube in his throat and took him off the ventilator so he could breathe on his own. Friday, he got out of bed, sat in a chair and was well enough that doctors removed the drainage tube from his chest.

Forty-eight hours after surgery, Vasco was sitting up in bed, eating french fries and chicken, laughing at a Jackie Chan movie he has seen at least half a dozen times and joking with Mac, the caregiver who traveled with him from their hometown of Blantyre, Malawi, to Chicago six weeks ago.

His doctors are expecting Vasco to move from ICU to a regular room at Hope over the weekend and to be able to send him home with us to Oak Park to recuperate sometime this week.

A few years back, Mac found Vasco living alone on the streets of Blantyre -- a fate all too common in sub-Saharan countries wracked by AIDS. In Malawi, an estimated 1 million children have been orphaned by AIDS, and more than 60,000 of those children, like Vasco, end up living on the streets.

After his mother and father died several years ago, someone put Vasco out on the street to fend for himself, telling the tiny child he'd been cursed by a witch doctor, that ants were eating his heart and that soon he would die.

Vasco knows that was an awful lie and that, far from being cursed, he is so very blessed. He knows his heart has been repaired and that he's going to live a long, healthy life.

Having him in our home these last six weeks, getting to know him -- his sense of humor, quick wit, slow temper and tendency to boss everyone around; his taste in music, food, clothes and friends; his fears and hopes and dreams -- has been the most magical and transformative experience of my life.

Vasco is a blessing. His love and loving spirit have fixed my heart, too.

He has taught me so much. About living and dying. About love and family. About what matters and what doesn't.

I see the world differently for having known him. It's as if the moment he put his hand in mine as we walked to the car on the curb outside O'Hare the day he arrived, my soul was recalibrated.

Everything looks different to me now. And I love it.

It was a long, sometimes tumultuous adventure getting Vasco's heart repaired. There were many times over the nearly two years since we first met the child we call "Wee Man" in a mud-and-wattle hut by the side of the road in Malawi that I thought it might not happen, or that he would die before we could get him here for treatment.

So many people -- family, friends and total strangers -- have walked with us on this journey, supporting us, praying for us, carrying us when we felt as if we couldn't keep going. And to all of you, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

To the folks at United Airlines who went out of their way to bring Vasco and Mac here for free, even though the airline doesn't even fly from Africa: Zikomo kwambiri -- thank you so very much for being his traveling mercies.

To Dr. Andrew Griffin, head of the Heart Institute for Children, who arranged for all of Vasco's treatment at Hope, and to all of the doctors and nurses and orderlies who have shown him (and us) such beautiful compassion and tender care, bless you. You have been God's healing hands for Vasco.

We're not sure what will happen next in Vasco's remarkable life. But today, he has a new lease on it.

Vasco will live, and I believe he will live boldly, paying it forward, his unbroken heart full of love, laughter, grace and promise.

Thank you.

A quick word from Pediatric ICU at Hope Children's Hospital here outside Chicago:

Vasco's recovery is nothing short of miraculous. He's out of bed, about to have his chest tube removed, talking, eating, laughing again. His little lion's heart is working as God intended now. And we are so very grateful - for all the love and prayer and support you've given this child.

Thank you.

To listen to Vasco's story on NPR's "The Story," CLICK HERE.

To read more about how Cathleen met Vasco in Malawi, check out Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace.

An Update and "The Story"

Wee Man is doing well today. By the time morning rounds were over, he was off the ventilator and had the breathing tube removed. He's been in and out of consciousness, but we've been able to talk to him and have him talk to us. To hear that sweet little voice again was a huge blessing. He's in a bit of pain, mostly discomfort from the drain tube in his chest, but that's why God invented morphine. Yay!

Oh, and he had a tooth come out! So Malawi's tooth fairy has got some long-distance flying to do tonite.

Right now he's sleeping with my Bose noise-blocking earphones on, listening to Zoey Deschanel's "She & Him" album. Sooo-weet!

Tomorrow on NPR, online and on Satellite radio nationwide, you can hear me (Cathleen) on "The Story" with Dick Gordon, telling Vasco's story.

Click HERE for details on where and when to listen.

We're about to move into a new room in the ICU so we'll check in later. But the Wee Man is very well.

Thank you for your continued prayer, love and spirit.

C&M&V

Vasco's in surgery now

Our brave little man went in for surgery about 1:20 p.m. CST today - 2.5 hours later than expected. (Back up in the OR, apparently.)

We'll keep you updated as we can. Surgery should take six hours or so.


UPDATE: 3:45 P.M. CST

Nurse practitioner just came out to brief us. Vasco is doing very well. They're just finishing the (Gore-Tex) patch of his ventricular septal defect, have cinched closed another small opening at the top of his aorta, and removed an extra membrane between the chambers. The only thing left is to repair or replace his mitral valve. They're assessing that now ... More info about 5:15 p.m. CST. Thanks for your prayers!


UPDATE: 4:55 P.M. CST

Praise the Lord! Vasco's surgery went extremely well. We just spoke to the surgeon and he's very very pleased. They didn't even have to repair his mitral valve. He's off the heart/lung machine and should be out of surgery in an hour. I can't thank you all enough for all of your prayers, love and support. Thank you for walking with us through this great adventure.


UPDATE: 6:06 P.M. CST

Vasco is out of surgery and in recovery/pediatric ICU. He's strong and vital and everything went well, even better than expected, according to his surgeon. He's still on a respirator and will remain on it at least overnight, but we'll get to see him in a few minutes. Hallelujah!

UPDATE: 7:15 P.M. CST

Just saw our Wee Man. His heart is already smaller, says the surgeon, and you can already see the difference in how his heartbeat just flutters through his chest rather than rattling and shaking it as it has his whole life. He's a fierce little dude. Strong and feisty. I love him so.

Prayer Request: Surgery Wednesday

Dear friends and family,

Vasco is scheduled for open-heart surgery at 11 a.m. (CST) Wednesday, June 10 at Hope Children's Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois.

Surgery should take about six hours.

Please watch this space for updates.

And thank you for bathing our sweet little guy in prayer.

Blessings and amazing grace,
Cathleen and Maury