The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Doctor turns stage 4 cancer diagnosis to lasting legacy
Fund to support Tanzanian orphans, families
EAST HAVEN — On the day after Thanksgiving, Dr. David Ross Russell learned he was dying.
But his diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer only strengthened his resolve to make a difference in the lives of the Tanzanian children and families that he, his wife and daughter have been committed to for four years.
The Small Things, founded by Bekka Ross Russell, 30, in 2014, began as an orphanage in Nkoaranga, Tanzania, founded years ago by Martha Ayo, known as Mama Pendo, whose official position with the Small Things is “Head Mama.”
Bekka Ross Russell was volunteering in Tanzania when “I got introduced to this orphanage and I met the kids who would become my daughter and son, and I met Mama Pendo,” she said. Together they launched the Small Things, which has grown into an organization
that cares for 50 children who have lost their mothers or other family members, reuniting as many families as possible. The Small Things includes a Family Preservation Program, helping more than 100 families stay together through micro-loans, education and business training.
David Ross Russell has lost 20 pounds since November and, while on chemotherapy, suffers from bloating, fatigue, nausea and hiccups. The chemo will extend his life to 10 or 12 months and he’s not in pain, he said. He’s taken a leave from his medical practice, but plans to make the most of the time he has left.
“The thing that I have found most impressive and powerful was that 10 minutes after the diagnosis, he was thinking about other people,” Bekka Ross Russell said. “He’s been consistently thinking about how to make the best of a terrible situation.”
The result is the David A. Ross Russell Legacy Fund, which the family hopes will bring more financial stability to The Small Things and a bright future to many more Tanzanian children.
David Ross Russell has been involved in hospice care, “a distinct interest of mine,” since immigrating from England in 1989 and opening his practice in internal medicine in Wallingford.
“One of the things that attracted me to the area was the presence of Connecticut Hospice” in Branford, he said at his condo on Long Island Sound. From 2013 to 2016, he was medical director for the inpatient palliative program at MidState Medical Center in Meriden and is also medical director for Hartford HealthCare at Home, part of the system that includes Hartford and MidState hospitals, which brings hospice and palliative care to patients in their homes.
His wife, Dorothy Goldberg, a cantor, also worked in public relations at a north London hospice.
Ross Russell, 57, was a founder in 1995 of ProHealth Physicians, which is composed of more than 300 doctors across the state. “The whole goal of that ... was the whole experience of medical care in the United States was unsatisfactory and we wanted to move back to value-based care and patient orientation,” he said.
Also, “I was instrumental in getting electronic health records implemented throughout the state,” he said.
“David is very well loved at ProHealth and when they found out he had this disease, they wanted to do something to honor him,” Goldberg said.
When his colleagues found out about Ross Russell’s illness, “Everybody was crying,” Goldberg said. Every one of them sobbing. ... They sobbed like their hearts were breaking.”
Bekka Ross Russell said the response from people “every time” was, “‘Oh, I love him. He’s so funny. He’s so kind.’ The biggest thing I’ve been told repeatedly ... is, unlike a lot of doctors, he’s always been kind and respectful and appreciative of everyone involved in medical care. Not the ‘doctor is God’ approach.”
David Ross Russell said he has made house calls “in virtually every street in Meriden and Wallingford over the years. I’ve done thousands of visits on my elderly and frail patients.”
Goldberg also has remained involved with hospice work while working as a cantor in Madison, Cheshire and Puerto Rico.
“I was on David’s hospice team for three years when we lived in Wallingford as a chaplain,” she said. She also has worked as a hospice chaplain with VNA Community Healthcare and Hospice on the shoreline, but is now on leave.
“Death and dying has always been my specialty,” she said. “I’m engaged with this work. I understand what it means. I look at it straight in the face. There are times when I’m terrified of living without David . ... Pretty much from the minute I met David, I didn’t want to live without him.”
Bekka Ross Russell tears up when thinking of the years she spent in Africa, away from her family.
“I’m very glad that we were able to come back when we did,” she said. “I’m extraordinarily glad that my kids have gotten as much time as they have with their Babu.”
She and her husband, Rizwan Kaiser Din, whom she met while studying at the London School of Economics, moved to Tanzania in 2013. They met Simon and Zawadi (which means “gift” in Swahili), when they were 21⁄2 and 1, and eventually adopted them. The children are now 9 and 8 years old.
“It’s very tough,” she said. “I’ve spent most of the last decade living away from home, trying to build something that makes a difference in the world . ... And I’m glad I did it. There’s a cost, that’s all; there’s a tradeoff there, but I know that that’s what he wanted me to be doing. None of this would have happened without him. It wouldn’t exist.”
World turned upside down
Before his diagnosis, Ross Russell was active outside of work as well.
“This man played in an over-55 soccer league until very recently,” Bekka Ross Russell said. “Two years ago, he did a 100-mile bike ride. He paints, he sails, he does woodworking. He does everything . ... It’s part of why he’s so irreplaceable.”
“Everything was going hunky-dory until October,” David Ross Russell said. “I felt a bit bloated. I was still playing soccer once a week.” When he saw his doctor, he said, “In about two minutes of explanation my world turned upside down.” His cancer had spread from his pancreas to other organs. “Basically, it’s a death sentence,” he said.
But while the news was devastating, Ross Russell did not let it knock him down. There are “two things that I think explains that,” he said. “One is I’m not afraid. I’ve seen people die; I’ve been there many, many times.” Looking at his wife and daughter (the couple also has a son, Adam), he said, “The most painful piece to me is what’s going to happen to these guys in that year of grieving.
“I still consider myself the luckiest guy in the world,” he said. “I was born into the generation with the most opportunities ever: to be a male, white uppermiddle-class British guy with every privilege. To then have the best of education, to have the greatest family. I feel like I’ve been pulling aces off the top of the deck all my life.”
He said of his cancer, “I resent it, not for any sense of unfairness, but for the lost dreams of what might have been.”
The news of Ross Russell’s illness has shown how much he means to the people in his life. “I can’t tell you how many people love him, how many people send him cards,” Goldberg said. “You don’t realize how many people you’ve had an impact on until something like this happens.”
The future of The Small Things
When Bekka Ross Russell first volunteered at the orphanage, two 10-monthold babies, Hope and Lulu, died of acute pneumonia because they were unable to receive hospital care. Ross Russell was told, “’People die like chickens here and it doesn’t have meaning and you just have to live with it,’ and that’s not how I live and that’s not how I’m built,” she said.
“Now I feel like this fund … gives us something, a way to make some meaning out of the meaningless tragedy.”
The Ross Russells have supported The Small Things through Bekka’s leadership and the family’s strong financial commitment: about $20,000 per year or 10 percent of its budget. “When David got this diagnosis, one of the things we worry about most as a family is this organization,” Goldberg said. “It’s a family organization; it started that way. One of the biggest fears was David wouldn’t be able to contribute to it as much as he has.”
“We’re still going monthto-month for cash flow and we want to get out of that,” Bekka Ross Russell said. So
the idea of a legacy fund was born.
Ross Russell named The Small Things based on a quote from Mother Teresa: “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” Eighty percent of the children in the orphanage had lost their mothers during childbirth and many families were overly strained by taking in other family members, partly because of the AIDS epidemic.
“Two-thirds of Tanzanian families already have at least one child under the age of 18 living with them who’s not a family member,” she said.
While they live at the orphanage, the organization’s Family Preservation Program works to help reunite the children with their families and more than half will go home, up from less than 10 percent when the program started.
“Basically, our approach is that if there is someone in the family who has a desire to take a child home, we will help to make it happen,” Ross Russell said.
For those with a smaller chance of going home, there is the Happy Family Children’s Village, which has housing for up to 30 children as well as their caretakers, attending school and living as a community. Empowering the community
The need is great. Twothirds of the country’s 45 million population live in poverty at less than $1.25 a day; 16 percent of children under 5 are malnourished, according to Heifer International. “The families are extremely poor,” Bekka Ross Russell said. “There’s no child care. One can of formula costs a salary for a week . ... We saw families who really loved their kids but thought that at the orphanage they were better off. We were able to redesign the system so they were able to take the kids home.”
“Really our whole focus is about empowering the community,” she said. “Forty-eight of our full-time on-the-ground staff are Tanzanian, which is something we’re really proud of.”
Her ultimate goal is to create family-preservation programs in other parts of Tanzania and east Africa. The legacy fund will help her “really be able to look more structurally at these problems and really create systems that are more enduring.”
David Ross Russell, whose office features photos of the children, said, “I have patients say to me ... ‘Oh, those poor children. That must be so sad.’ ... These are some of the happiest kids in the world. They are delightful. They are well loved. They are happy, happy children. What we want to do is make sure they have a future.
“We are immensely proud to have a 30-year-old daughter who has effected this incredible amount of change and has so much promise to do so much more.”
To support The Small Things, which is a registered 501(c)3 charity, go to www.thesmallthings.org or send a check to The Small Things Inc., 80 Cosey Beach Ave., Apt. 4, East Haven 06512, with “David A. Ross Russell Legacy Fund” on the memo line. For more information, call 475-331-0505.