Doctor Malec, pan Doktor Edward Malec

Doktor Malec

Hub

Mardie MacDonald Fund

"Dazzling! Breathtaking!"

Pan Doktor Edward Malec

- Doctor Edward Malec -

Dr. Edward Malec's CTSNet memberships:
American Association for Thoracic Surgery
Cardiothoracic Surgery Network
The Society of Thoracic Surgeons
Institutional Affiliation:
Department of Cardiac Surgery, Klinikum Großhadern, Ludwig Maximilians University
Previously:
Uniwersytecki Szpital Dzieciecy w Krakowie
(University Children Hospital in Crakow)
Specialty:
Pediatric Cardiac Surgery

Uniwersytecki Szpital Dzieciecy w Krakowie

- How Doktor Malec Saved Our Life -

My wife Lidia and I met in Alaska, in the summer, although she keeps claiming it was winter and in Acapulco. We married in Zierikzee, the Netherlands, and moved to Poland, to a quaint village in the Tatra Mountains. Our daughter Bastiaantje (named after my maternal grandmother) was born on 9 September, 2005. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen! My wife had given birth to a blond, blue eyed, wrinkled pink angel.

All seemed well at first, but a thorough check revealed that her little heart had the functionality of a spent piñata. It looked like a lit cigar on the screen. She had Transposition of the Great Arteries, a major Ventricular Septal Defect, her pulmonary arteries were out of whack and there was tissue wild growth all over. We were told that Bassie was going to die. She was going to have a short life of lying in bed and gasping for air. And then she was going to die.

Unless, of course, there was someone who would operate on her. Obviously, the survival chance of cases like our Bassie is not very high and most hospitals either don't have the highly specialized pediatric cardiac surgeons required for this kind of procedure or else are reluctant to risk jacking up their mortality rate by accepting a challenge like Bas.

We opted to sell our house and move to the Netherlands, but specialists at the Sophia Children's Hospital in Rotterdam urged us not to move our daughter. We were stuck in Poland. And Poland, beautiful as it is, is so close to bankruptcy that it can not afford anyone good enough to crack open a baby's chest.

With this knowledge in mind we were sent to Doctor Malec (pronounced Maletz); Pan Doktor Edward Malec. I expected a quack and a butcher. I was rude to him. I told him that my engine room looked better and cleaner than his hospital. He looked at me without a trace of indignation or loss of self-respect and told me that the hospital was cleaned by volunteers; parents and nuns and such. The only professional cleaners they could afford were continuously scrubbing the Operating Theatre.

I went on line and called every heart surgeon and pediatrician I could find and asked them about Doctor Malec. Without exception the mere mentioning of his name evoked expressions of admiration. It turned out that Doctor Malec was one of the world's leading pediatric cardio-surgeons. He had studied and worked in the US, Switzerland and Germany and everyone wanted him back. And that for a hefty wage. What on earth was this genius doing in Cracow working for a McDonald's salary?

I decided to ask him. I picketed outside his office and jumped him when he showed. He looked tired. "What can I do for you?" he asked and I stood there and could think of nothing else to say than, "Can you repair my daughter's heart?" He took hold of my hands. His fingers were lean and smooth. His grasp was the most solid thing I had ever felt. When I looked in his eyes I saw clear across the enormous distance that separated me from this beautiful man.

For the life of me I can't remember what he said next. All I remember is what Jesus said, "Let the children come to me and hinder them not."

For the next two weeks Lidia, Bas and I lived in Doctor Malec's hospital. We were constantly engulfed by the bleeps and bloops of esoteric machinery, and by the sounds of parents who had just lost their child.

It was like floating in an ocean teeming with sharks that picked off our kids one by one. You never knew who would be next. All you could do was keep swimming and hoping that the shark of death would go after someone else's child.

Lidia, still recovering, sat with her during the day. I held the night. I read to my daughter Amir Aczel's biography of Georg Cantor, the man who studied infinity and died insane because of it. When she wasn't sleeping Bassie looked at me continuously and I believe she really enjoyed it.

The night before it was Bassie's turn Lidia and I held her and each other. Bas had wires and tubes hanging off her. We watched how she slowly dosed off. When dawn came I called upon the grace vested in me by the Almighty and baptized Bas with mineral water. We put her in a little glass cradle on wheels and rolled her towards a big green door where we had to wait. A man in a green hospital suit came through, said, "Good morning," in Polish and took her away. The door closed. We were parents in Schrödinger's box. The consistency of our little family was in a state of quantum flux.

It is horrible in that box. It is dark in there, and there are no certainties at all. Even God may not exist in that box.

Eight hours later we were called to the post-op recovery room, an Intensive Care facility full of doctors and nurses and the shark of death that circled a ghastly array of little swollen bodies. Some of the baby's were awake and cried with blood-curdling hoarse howls; others uttered little breathless yelps.
Bas lay in a glass cradle, in the far corner by the window. She was kept paralyzed and comatose. Her little soft body had turned grey, bloated and seemed artificial, like a wax statue. She had cold, hard things sticking in her. She looked like a little Borg queen.

Someone told us that the operation had been a success, but that Bas was by no means out of harms way. We wanted to speak with Doctor Malec but we couldn't. He was taking a short break before his next operation. And we could use some rest too, someone else observed. Why didn't we go to our room and lay down? I tried to make them promise to call us if there was any sign of trouble. They said that there were plenty signs of trouble already. But they would call if there was trouble that wouldn't go away.

At five a.m. Lidia woke up with 'a bad feeling.' She called the recovery room and was told that Bassie was in a crisis; they had had no time to call us yet. Lidia woke me up and we rushed upstairs. When we entered the room we were told that Bas was okay now. Her heart had stopped but Doktor Malec got it going again. Then she started bleeding, but he patched the leak. We found him sitting in a chair next to Bassie's cradle. "You're here early," Lidia said to him.

"I'm operating at eight," he said.

A few days later we were stopped by a nurse. She wanted to know if we were the parents of that little girl who almost didn't make it through her first post-op night. We told her that we were, and how fortunate we were that Doktor Malec had shown up for work that early. She smiled and shook her head. "He never left," she said, "he sat with your daughter all night, to make sure she was stable. He does that all the time."

We stayed in the hospital for another two weeks and Bassie was slowly awoken. Lidia still sat with her through the day and I through the night.

Lidia told me that Doktor Malec came by to see Bassie every morning, usually accompanied by other medical personnel and always on his way to a next case.

Sometimes when Bassie slept and we trusted the nurses to be on full alert, we went for little strolls through the hospital. On one of those walks we saw Doctor Malec scurry about at the end of a corridor.

Lidia jumped to high gear and gave chase. He tried to get away but Lidia cornered him and grabbed him and kissed him. Right before he broke loose and disappeared behind a STAFF ONLY door I yelled something stupid, like, "Hey man, let me fix your car sometime!" As I saw him duck away behind the closing door I wondered what I would have yelled if Bas had died. What do other, less fortunate fathers yell at Doctor Malec?

We haven't seen or spoken with him since. I started the same letter a dozen times, but never finished it. What can you say to a man who can not afford to listen, who must maintain objectivity in triage, who daily goes out into the grey zone between life and death and tries his best to snatch little children away from the grave, who has given his life and his world famous skills to a needful people who can't afford to reimburse him?

I don't know, but I can name a dozen very famous Bible verses that apply directly to Doctor Malec.

I once met a retired and royally funded doctor who worked as a volunteer on the Mercy Ships, mostly performing plastic surgery on deformed people in Africa. When I was in India I heard the name of mother Teresa whispered in perpetual awe. And here in Poland even us Protestants deeply admire John Paul II for all his work. But what about Doctor Malec? How is it possible that this man has to scrounge for funds? Isn't there a Nobel Prize for Pediatric Cardiac Surgery?

For what it's worth, Doctor Malec, if you ever read this: Lidia, Bassie and I love you. Bas is alright. She runs and plays and trashes about the house like there is no tomorrow. She loves Reksio and Dorotka and her Polish is already better than that of her old man.

And, hey man, if you ever need your car worked on, give us a call.

For reasons that are too complicated for me to form any opinion whatsoever, Doktor Malec felt reluctantly compelled to move to München, to take up shop there. It is rumored that he wants to return to Krakow someday. We can't help but hope that he will. We pray that Doktor Malec will be able to continuously submit his services to an army of grateful parents.

Mardie MacDonald Fund

Read the Wikipedia articles:

Ventricular Septal Defect

Transposition of the Great Arteries