TO THEM, ‘IT MEANS HOPE’
To help Syrian refugees such as Mouhamad Al Rahmou and daughter Shahad as they navigate health care in a new land, CHEO has had to evolve,
Baraa Alwafei was born into war five years ago in the beleaguered city of Homs, Syria.
Homs was under siege by the Syrian military when his mother, Rehab Alaranout, went into labour. She walked alone into the street to find help, and was taken to hospital by fighters engaged in defending the city, then an opposition stronghold.
After giving birth, Alaranout fled with her family to a town near Damascus, but the fighting soon followed. They left the country and made their way to Egypt then Lebanon.
In Lebanon, Alaranout registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which arranged for the family to be sponsored as refugees in Canada.
“We could not go home,” said Alaranout, who worked in the family’s pizza restaurant.
“Before the war, we had a normal life. Not everything was available, but we were happy, we were content,” she said through a translator. “But then, the war was in our street. And we were inside our houses.”
Alaranout was happy to arrive into the peace and stability of Canada on Dec. 27, 2015.
The family moved into an apartment in Lincoln Fields.
Then Baraa, her only child, fell sick.
It started with a simple fever. The fever persisted, however, and Alaranout took him to their family doctor, who recommended Tylenol and Advil. But the symptoms grew worse: Baraa had trouble urinating and his breathing became laboured.
Alaranout asked her sponsors from Woodroffe United Church for advice, and they told her to take Baraa to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. She came to the hospital for the first time on May 10, 2016. “It was very difficult,” she remembered. “First, because I cannot talk directly to the doctors, and secondly, because here everything was so different.”
She was frustrated by doctors who wanted a full history of Baraa’s illness. “No, no, no,” she told them. “You have to start from the end.”
Baraa was diagnosed with pneumonia and a blood infection, and was admitted to hospital. He was sent home after three days when his fever subsided.
Less than a week later, however, Alaranout returned to CHEO: Baraa was in much worse shape.
Three days of tests followed and, all the while, his condition deteriorated steadily. He seemed to employ his whole body in the effort to breathe.
“The thing that scared me is that I did not know what my son had. What I was seeing, I was seeing my child dying little by little. Dying. He had even more difficulty breathing.”
Finally, doctors told Alaranout that Baraa had a serious problem with his heart: A valve had been damaged by his pneumonia and urgently needed repair.
Alaranout and her husband were terrified at the prospect of surgery, but quickly agreed to the plan as explained through a translator. Surgeons sketched for them what they proposed to do in the operating room.
Baraa was transferred to intensive care and his surgery scheduled for 8 a.m. the next day. He spent 10 hours on the operating table. Someone updated the family throughout the day. “We felt like we were inside the operating room with them,” said Alaranout.
In the end, the surgeons were unable to fully repair the valve; they said a second operation would be required.
“The most important thing for us is that our child is still alive,” Alaranout said.
Baraa spent the next 12 days on a respirator in intensive care. The nurses told Alaranout she could sleep beside her son: It helped to calm her fears. “It was a very difficult period, and I could not sleep. Every day, we had new, scary things,” she said.
Baraa required an angioplasty, and his blood pressure see-sawed. One night, nurses woke Alaranout and told her Baraa’s blood pressure had plummeted to zero and that his heart had stopped. She watched as an emergency team used a defibrillator to revive him. “It was a moment that I cannot even describe,” Alaranout said. “The medical team was wonderful.”
Alaranout came to appreciate the smiles of staff that passed her in the hallways: It meant, she believed, that her son was still alive. “They were giving me hope,” she said.
Three weeks later, Baraa was out of danger. He returned home and has been improving ever since. In fact, Baraa has done so well that doctors have decided to delay his second valve surgery.
Alaranout said she can’t express gratitude enough for the doctors and nurses who cared for her son, and managed her fears. “This hospital is wonderful, it’s wonderful,” she said. “When I come here, I feel safe.”
Alaranout said she has had no difficulty adjusting to life in Canada. She refused to complain even about the snow or freezing rain. “I feel nothing is difficult here: Everything is in order,” she said. “I saw my child dying and look at him now.”
On the floor of the meeting room on CHEO’s ground floor, Baraa was playing. Laughing. Happy.