Help Save An Adoption Heroine's Life

The plea below (click on more) comes from an adoptive mom who is also an MD. She has become close to her child's former foster mom, who is suffering from a horrible disease and in need of a surgical procedure she can not afford. Guatadopt has made arrangements through Hands of Hope where you can make a tax deducible contribution to help this women get the life saving surgery she needs. We can assure you that this is legitimate and encourage everyone to give as much as she can. As soon as the needed fund have been raised, we will let everyone know (though we still recommend donating to Hands of Hope at any time).

To make a contribution, click here: http://www.justgive.org/giving/donate.jsp?charityId=5240& In the field that says "Designate my donation", type in "For Claudia" and the donation will go towards her surgery.

Thanks in advance!

From Kristen Lehberg, MD
I am writing as a mother of two children - my son, Jonah is 2 and my daughter, Isabel, is 9 months. We adopted them both from Guatemala and are forever grateful for the opportunity to be their parents. We are also forever grateful for the choices that their birthmothers made and for the excellent care given to them by their foster parents. We parents of Guatemalan-born children all know that the real heros of Guatemalan adoption are the foster parents, whose loving care allows us, in most cases, to bring our babies home healthy, happy, and relatively quickly.

We got a call on September 7th from Jonah's foster mother. Her name is Claudia and she is 37 years old. She has two children - ages 13 and 8. She is married. She worked as a foster mother in Guatemala for years and did an exceptional job. We met and visited with her family on three of our five trips in the last 23 months and have maintained regular contact since bringing Jonah home in January 2005. She loved our son and took really good care of him - she still calls him "amor" and really holds him in a special place in her heart - we truly believe that he wouldn't be the dynamic, hilarious and loving little boy he is today had he not had her loving care for the first 6 months of his life.

During that phone call on the 7th, Claudia told that is dying, as she cried and talked about how she is not ready to leave this world. About 3 months ago, she sustained a blood clot to the brain and now has hydrocephalus, or water on/swelling in the brain. She needs to have a shunt (VP shunt) placed to displace this fluid into her bloodstream or her brainstem will eventually herniate out of the base of her skull and she will die. The shunt allows the fluid to escape into the bloodstream and leave the body through the kidneys/urine as all other fluids do. It is a relatively simple and common surgery and works quite well for this problem. This surgery is not done at the public hospitals and costs $6000 (40,000 quetzales) to have done at the private hospitals. This may seem like a trivial cost for surgery in this country, but there, as we all know, this is an impossible expense. And because of this process, for the last 3 months, she has not been able to work - she has terrible headaches, and is having frequent seizures. She is taking seizure medication.

We want to help her ourselves but we are unable to pay for the whole surgery ourselves and we are therefore seeking donations to help her get medical care. Now, I wish I could promise that this surgery would result in great quality and quantity of life - of course, I cannot. I would hope, in a country with such limited resources, that it would not even be offered if she did not have a fighting chance.

If you are interested in donating, any amount would be appreciated. We have already collected pledges or funds in the amount of $1000 so we have $5000 more to raise. Luckily, we are able to raise this money through Hands of Hope, which will allow for a tax deductible donation (a receipt will be given) for anyone who wishes to contribute.

Thank you SO MUCH for your consideration.