Safe Haven

By Amy Gomes, PT

Union, New Jersey. I am 10 years old and new on the block, and make a friend who will change my life forever. Debbie is 4. She has a great smile, no words, and cannot run and play.

I pull her up the street in a Radio Flyer wagon. I push the tricycle as her feet, strapped to the pedals, go around and around. Her joy is worth every drop of my sweat. At other times we play in the backyard pool, where it's easy to forget she hasn't use of her legs.

One day I ask my mother, “Who are the people who work with kids like Debbie?” She thinks it's physical therapists who do that. I jump on my bicycle and find the perfect book at the library. It's called something like So You Want to Be a Physical Therapist? “I do want to be a physical therapist,” I answer silently.

Fast forward 10 years. My family has relocated to Florida. I make the cut at Florida International University to pursue a physical therapy degree, but must leave my quiet rural town of Bushnell and travel south 6 hours to metropolis Miami. It's a little scary, but I am motivated.

After working as a generalist at a large community hospital, I finally enter the pediatrics realm of physical therapy there. And it is at Miami Children's Hospital that I meet the first child I will adopt and bring into my family.

She's mentioned during morning rounds. “If anyone wants a baby who won't live too long, she's available.” That's the gist. I run up to the special care nursery and lay my eyes on the most beautiful baby in the room. During supper that night, I tell my husband, a 4th-year medical student, about this wonderful child. I can't remember her cardiac diagnosis, but know part of it is “trunk.” “Is it truncus arteriosus?” he asks. It is. “We can't adopt her,” he says. “She won't live.”

I only ask that he come see her. He does, and 8 weeks later, the day before Thanksgiving, we bring her home. The following March she has open heart surgery in San Francisco. Her miraculous recovery makes the front page of the Miami News on June 6, 1983.

Two years later, we get a call from an Orlando social worker who knows the story of our Brooke and wants to know if we'll take in another child with a heart condition. Enter our first son, 6-month-old Ian. Unbeknownst to me, I am pregnant with Cameron at the time. Soon, we'll have 3 children under the age of 4.

After several job changes and one more adoption-Abbey, a precious girl with Down syndrome-I decide that having my own practice will best complement my lifestyle. With an occupational therapist as my partner, we open Central Florida Pediatric Therapy Associates. Seventeen years later, our staff of more than 30 PTs, occupational therapists, and speech therapists provides in-home care to more than 300 children.

My own children now are grown and on their own, save 20-year-old Abbey, who lives with me and attends public school. But I'm still deeply involved with children, and not only in my practice. Having traveled to Ukraine to work during a summer in orphanages and the homes of children with disabilities, I want to provide year-round help to kids who are banned from Ukrainian public schools because of their disabilities. In fall 2007, having used my home as collateral for a loan and secured donations from friends and family, Hope Haven Ukraine is born.

At this writing in fall 2008, the walls are up, the doors and windows have been installed, and the roof is on. Construction is on hold as I raise funds to complete the facility and ship donated furniture and physical therapy equipment. Bus companies in the United States and Scotland have pledged money for lift-equipped buses, but those, too, must be shipped.

Sometime in 2009, Hope Haven Ukraine will open its doors, and children with disabilities such as the orphan I'm cradling in the photo at lower left will have the chance to attend year-round a school built for them and run by Ukrainians who, like me, want to make a positive difference in these kids' lives.

What began in New Jersey continues, decades later and a world away-with the promise of many smiles yet to come.
__________________
Amy Gomes, PT, is an owner of and practitioner at Central Florida Pediatric Therapy Associates in Minneola. For more information about Hope Haven Ukraine, visit www.hopehavenschool.com.

_{PT Magazine - December 2008}