COMMENTARY: A heart is a terrible thing to waste

(UNDATED) The hole in Vasco Sylvester’s heart isn’t there anymore. In a three-hour operation on June 10, surgeons at Hope Children’s Hospital outside Chicago, 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 […]

(UNDATED) The hole in Vasco Sylvester’s heart isn’t there anymore.

In a three-hour operation on June 10, surgeons at Hope Children’s Hospital outside Chicago, 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 closed another tiny hole at the top of his aorta. Now, thanks to the miraculous handiwork of his surgical team, Vasco’s heart is working as God intended.


In the days since surgery, each time I’ve looked at Vasco, the 10-year-old Malawian AIDS orphan we 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 intensive care an hour after surgeons closed the four-inch-long incision 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. He’s small, but he’s amazingly strong. A day after surgery, doctors removed the breathing tube in his throat and took him off the ventilator so he could breathe on his own.

Forty-eight hours after surgery, he was sitting up in bed, eating french fries and chicken, laughing and joking at a Jackie Chan movie he has seen at least half a dozen times.

Not quite a week after surgery, doctors released Vasco from the hospital. He can eat whatever he wants but has to wait two months to play soccer, baseball or ride his bike, while his sternum heals completely.

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


After his mother and father died, 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.

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 at the airport, 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 “Wee Man” in a mud-and-wattle hut by the side of the road 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. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.


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.

(Cathleen Falsani is the author of “Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace” and the upcoming “The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers.”)

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