Home is where the heart is for nurse, adoptee
Rwanda trip changed 2 lives
As a cardiac nurse practitioner, Julie Carragher is attuned to the rhythms of the heart.
But it wasn’t until she journeyed to Rwanda four years ago with a group of cardiac surgeons and medical volunteers under the banner of Team Heart, and came upon the dying heart of a young Rwandan girl by the name of Redempta, that Julie Carragher was humbled by the deeper rhythms not recorded on an EKG.
“In this country, children who come down with strep throat are given an antibiotic and that’s the end of it,” Carragher said. “But in Rwanda, a simple case of strep leads to rheumatic fever which ultimately attacks the heart and leads to death.”
It was on death’s doorstep that the cardiac nurse from Braintree found a 15-year-old girl who looked all of eight.
“She was endstage rheumatic heart disease when we first came upon her,” Julie recalled. “As a lead member of the Team Heart screening team we had to make tough decisions as to who were the best candidates for surgery. And Redempta was dying.”
It was a Rwandan doctor who beseeched Julie to consider the radiance of the dying girl’s smile.
“What he told me was for a child to have such a smile in the midst of her deepest, deepest suffering, there had to be something more for her on this earth,” Julie told me.
Redempta would have the two diseased valves in her heart replaced, but that is hardly the end of the story. During the initial screening, Redempta’s mother confronted Julie in what she described as “a frenzy.”
“She kept screaming and pointing at me,” Julie said, “telling me that you must take my daughter. ‘I want you to be her mother. Please! Please! Take my daughter. You are her mother now!’ ”
Even as a devout Catholic, Julie Carragher didn’t know what to make of this. “I thought it was crazy, but at the same time I couldn’t dismiss it,” she said.
On the way home from that first trip to Rwanda, Julie would discover a lump on her breast that was cancer. She would fight through it, but along the way, she kept thinking that God was telling her something.
“I began to be consumed about how could I bring this little girl here,” she said. “How could I bring her into my home?”
All of the channels for adoption were nonexistent. Even her congressman, Stephen Lynch, was hard-pressed to offer a solution, though he supported Julie’s efforts to bring Redempta to her home.
A few years before Julie joined Team Heart, she’d lost a daughter, Zoe Margaret, who was stillborn.
“After wondering about how I could bring Redempta here, the thought suddenly came to me in the middle of the night. I would make Redempta the first recipient of the Zoe Margaret Carragher Scholarship.”
And so a letter was sent off to Redempta’s parents in Rwanda, and local government officials informed them of the good news. Within days, the girl with the radiant smile and the restored heart was on her way to Julie Carragher’s home … and heart.
Was it dumb luck? Or was it faith?
Redempta is now a student who’s been excelling at St. Mary of the Assumption School in Brookline.
“My faith has always been a strong part of my life,” Julie said, “but this experience really has convinced me that God really does work in mysterious ways.”
He also works through people like Dr. Morton “Chip” Bolman and his wife, Cecilia “Ceeya” Patton-Bolman, who founded Team Heart in 2007, when they were based at the Brigham & Women’s.
Their efforts have saved thousands of lives over the past 10 years. Team Heart is currently raising funds to build what would be the only cardiac care center in Rwanda. For more information go to: TeamHeart.org.