”We can’t lose him. We prayed for seven years to have this child, we can’t lose him. I kept telling myself that over and over while the doctors explained how serious the situation was.
Erik was born on a Friday and everything was perfect. I remember the first sound he made when he came into the world. On Monday, the doctors came for a check-up. We were supposed to go home, to finally be just the three of us. The doctor looked at the nurse. They didn’t tell me anything, they just took the baby away from me.
Call the child’s father, tell him to come now if he still wants to see him. That’s what the doctors advised.
That’s when I found out that Erik had a severe heart malformation – transposition of the great arteries, aortic stenosis, and a ventricular septal defect. The major arteries of the heart were crossed and blocked, blood was circulating with great difficulty, and there was a hole in the wall between the heart chambers.
He was only two weeks old when he had his first surgery. He wasn’t even a month old when he needed the second one. Erik’s heart was the size of a plum, and all I could ask was: You’ve done this before, right? You can do this, can’t you?
Pray that we come out of the operating room, they told me.
When they finally came out, it felt as if I had given birth to him all over again.
I wished then that childbirth had hurt me more, that I had suffered more, so he wouldn’t have had to go through any of this. Open heart surgery, countless wires covering his tiny body, a terrifying number of medications.
The surgeries will continue until he is 16–18 years old, until his heart reaches maturity. I wish I could take his place in those surgeries…
Today, Erik is five years old and he doesn’t talk much about what happened to him. Once, I heard him telling a friend who had cut his hand not to worry, that he would heal, just like they healed his little heart — but the scar remained…
I am very grateful that here, at Yuppi Camp, I was able to leave him in the hands of the volunteers and trust that they would take care of him. Because that is also very hard.”
Gabriela, Erik’s mother, first-time participants at Yuppi Camp.
In 2025, for the first time in Romania, we welcomed in Yuppi Camp children with heart diseases. We don’t want to stop here!
Just like Erik, hundreds of chronically and seriously ill children in Romania need help healing the wounds caused by illness. They need to learn not to be afraid.
