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Iraqi Kurd kid "Sivar Hawar" in the pink
21.12.2005
By Paul H.B. Shin
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Sivar Hawar's heart
stopped beating at 9:05 a.m. yesterday as doctors in
the Bronx began to repair life-threatening defects
that had tinged the 6-year-old Iraqi boy's smiling
face a shade of purple.
About 90 minutes later, his heart began pumping life
through his body again, with one dramatic
difference.
"For the first time in this child's life, he's
pink," said his surgeon, Dr. Samuel Weinstein,
director of pediatric heart surgery at Montefiore
Medical Center, where Sivar is the third Iraqi child
to receive a life-saving operation to mend
congenital heart defects.
"I'm overjoyed because the operation went
successfully," said Sivar's father, Mohammed Hawar,
who had shed tears of worry just hours before when
his son was wheeled in for surgery.
"I'm going to call my family now to give them the
great news," Hawar said through an interpreter. "I
thank you for everything you've done for us."
Just moments before anesthesia put him to sleep,
Sivar was captivating nurses with his shy grin.
"Look at that smile!" they cooed as the boy was
prepped for the three-hour operation - a complex,
yet relatively routine procedure unavailable in his
war-torn country.
Sivar had a hole between the two lower chambers of
his heart, plus a serious blockage in the artery
that channels blood from the heart to the lungs.
"He couldn't run long distances because he got tired
quickly," said his father, an ethnic Kurd who lives
in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya. "I would
love to see him become a doctor."
With the assistance of Army Staff Sgt. Marikay
Satryano - a Bronx teacher and a Reservist now based
in Amman, Jordan - Sivar and three other children
were chosen from a pool of 200 Iraqi kids to receive
fully funded heart operations at Montefiore.
Their trips were paid for by Gift of Life
International, a Long Island-based charity.
www.nydailynews.com
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