Carmen Uscatu: A Journey of Tears and Triumph, witnessing Miracles at the Dăruiește Viață Hospital
Carmen Uscatu, President of
“Black and white
Gray and pink
April 8 – hospital journal
Today the first children were moved.
On the hallway between the old building and the new building, sponsors and donors did not come today. Patients passed through today. On the first stretcher, a little girl. Two and a half years old. She was crying. The medical staff, in colorful uniforms, surrounded her, trying to calm her down. I didn’t hear what they were saying to her. I didn’t see her mother either, maybe because emotions overwhelmed me. An avalanche of thoughts. Emotions. Difficulties and beautiful things flashed before my eyes and instantly vanished. I haven’t lived in vain, I told myself. It was worth it. Every humiliation, every frustration, every evening when I went to bed because the day had been too much. Every morning when I woke up staring at the ceiling, and there were quite a few, and reality hit me like an insurmountable obstacle. Every abyss I was immersed in and couldn’t see a way out. It was worth it. The elevator doors opened.
Then, in front of my eyes, passed the team filming these moments, Claudiu Mitcu and Banu Stefan, the photographer. Stefan saw me in the hallway and turned his lens towards me. Then he disappeared. In the elevator, the girl who was crying also got in. Her crying overwhelmed me. The surgical assistant hugged me. She hugged me, and I cried.
I allowed myself to experience this joy with tears. I saw Sorin Tarnoveanu and his colleague next to me, both neurosurgeons. They had that pure, childlike joy in their eyes. They broke the ice. They were the first to move.
April 16 – hospital journal
4:30 AM. The alarm went off. At 5:32, I was at the hospital. Ruxandra Vidlescu had informed us that at 6 o’clock they would start moving the patients. When I arrived at the oncology department, it was quiet. 2 children were still on the drip. They didn’t have mobile stands. So these children were on the list of the last 11. At 6:15, they started moving them. One by one. I saw joy. I saw amazement. I saw anxiety. Mixed feelings I read in the eyes of the children, mothers, and medical staff.
……
Since 2015, when we started raising money to build toilets at Marie Curie and until today, 2024, when the children and medical staff settled in the new hospital, in Romania, we have had 12 health ministers. How could they have built a hospital?
The Dăruiește Viață Hospital is a miracle. It exists because of you, those who believed you could. In a country where it was said it couldn’t be done, you proved it could.”
Source: Carmen Uscatu/LinkedIn
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