When our team was identifying children for our November 2018 Cleft Medical Exchange, we learned about a little boy named Sebastian. Sebastian is seven years old and lives with his grandparents and sister in a remote part of Gansu province. His parents are migrant workers far from home.
We first learned of baby Nina when her orphanage contacted us asking for emergency help. This tiny newborn had come into the world with multiple medical issues and needed to get to a hospital as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, a major snowstorm in her province closed all the roads and airports, making her transport impossible. By the time she was finally able to be moved, she was in critical condition. Dehydrated, malnourished, and in severe breathing distress, her prognosis seemed grim.
2018 is a very special year to all of us at Love Without Boundaries, as we celebrate 15 years of helping orphaned and vulnerable children find the hope and healing they deserve. All through this wonderful anniversary year, we’ll be bringing you updates on some of the children whose lives were changed since our work began in 2003. We hope as you read their stories over the coming months that you will know just what a difference our incredible LWB supporters have made in the world. Join with us as we celebrate 15 years of love. Our first update is about a little boy who was helped by LWB in 2016. People all over the world fell in love with precious Phillip, a baby from an orphanage in southern China who was born with a complex heart condition called Tetralogy of Fallot, or ToF.
Twins Harley and James were born conjoined in October of 2015 in southern Guangdong Province. Harley and James’s parents were extremely young, and the cost of providing the specialized medical care their new babies required was completely out of their reach. They faced other obstacles as well, as hospitals in their region refused to take the case because of the family’s poverty. Unwilling to give up, the family traveled to Shanghai where they heard that other conjoined twins had been successfully separated. This is where LWB became a part of their story.
In early 2016, we learned about twin boys who were born conjoined at their pelvis area. Harley and James shared one liver but had two bladders and four kidneys. They lived with their 20-year-old parents in a small village in rural Guizhou. The operation to separate them was expected to be extremely complex and costly — completely out of reach for this impoverished family to borrow or pay.
About a quarter of the world’s population live in slums, officially defined as “squalid and overcrowded districts inhabited by people in poverty.” In the region we recently visited in Cambodia, that definition was sadly accurate. We passed shanty after shanty built right along the railroad track, metal shacks thrown up by squatters, with dangling electrical lines I was told were illegally and dangerously spliced in. We came to this slum in Cambodia in search of a baby girl whom Leng, our LWB Cambodia Director, first met at a border crossing between Cambodia and Thailand. Leng had been extremely concerned to see how malnourished and sick the little girl was.
Over the last fourteen years of our work providing pediatric medical care, children born with congenital heart defects have always been so dear to us. As most of you know, LWB actually began trying to help one little baby get the heart surgery he needed. Today, keeping in mind baby Kang who began it all for us, we are asking you to consider helping a beautiful baby girl from Mongolia get her life-saving operation and a chance for a healthy future.
Yesterday was #GivingTuesday, and we at LWB decided that our focus for this day of giving back was going to be focused on one little baby in a children’s hospital in Shanghai.
While many of us on the western side of the world are shopping for presents, putting up Christmas trees, and hanging our holiday lights, baby Mateo, an orphaned boy from southern China, is undergoing dialysis up to 11 times each day. His kidneys are failing, and doctors are working to prevent complete kidney failure as the family who has chosen him for adoption works frantically to expedite the permissions they need to bring him home. Read more.
Two months ago, we introduced you to a baby “superhero” named Phillip.
When Phillip arrived at the hospital in Shanghai, he was a chubby, active boy in need of heart surgery for a complex heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot (ToF). From the photos we saw, it was difficult to believe he was even sick! Read more.
Harley and James, the formerly conjoined twins, were treated to lunch this week by some of our wonderful volunteers in Shanghai! Their mission? To delivery a very special package from a 96-year-old grandmother in Missouri. Read more.
