After Haiti quake, Ukiah doctor brings heart patient to Santa Rosa

<p>On a day both hot and full of rain, four months after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, Donald Victor Leopold's father helped him into a crowded tent serving as a medical clinic in Port-au-Prince, the country's battered capital city.</p><p>The doctor who put his stethoscope to Leopold's chest knew quickly that the otherwise strapping 22-year-old was in trouble.</p><p>“I realized he wasn't going to survive very long at all if something couldn't be done,” said Dale Morrison, a Ukiah cardiologist who had traveled to Haiti to offer help in the aftermath of the 7.0 magnitude quake of Jan. 12, 2010.</p><p>Morrison, who had gone to Haiti with a contingent of 30 staff from the Ukiah Valley Medical Center, resolved to do something.</p><p>“It's pretty sad to have to tell someone that there's nothing we can do,” he said.</p><p>Not quite two years later, his efforts have paid off. Leopold is in Santa Rosa, where he is to undergo heart surgery today at Sutter Medical Center that is intended to give him many more years of life.</p><p>Leopold has congenital aortic valve disease. Essentially, that means that his blood, once it's pumped out of his heart, flows right back in. Forced to pump twice as hard, his overworked heart swells and weakens.</p><p>Haitian doctors medicated him but couldn't do what he really needed.</p><p>“The doctor told him, ‘You need this surgery or you will die,' ” said Leopold's brother, Richardson Victor Leopold, 33, who accompanied his sibling, whose English is limited, to Santa Rosa.</p><p>“It's not possible to do this in Haiti, there's not enough technology,” Richardson said.</p><p>His brother started to suffer at 18, he said.</p><p>“He feels tired if he walks, if he plays basketball,” he said. “He can't work a lot, for just five minutes, when he works more he can't, I don't know the word .<TH>.<TH>.” — he paused and inhaled, then exhaled, demonstrating the act of breathing.</p><p>“He couldn't,” he said.</p><p>The brothers arrived in Santa Rosa Wednesday. On Saturday, Donald Leopold moved slowly around the room at the budget hotel where they are staying. He was short of breath and favoring one leg.</p><p>“This is a dream,” he said happily. </p><p>Morrison called Donald Leopold, now 24, six months ago to tell him the plan was on. Although another medical institution he would not identify had declined, Sutter Medical Center agreed to pay for the surgery.</p><p>“It's the only possibility to survive,” the husky heart patient said, recalling how he'd cried at the news. “So much, so much.”</p><p>Paperwork delayed the trip. Guarantees that Sutter would treat Leopold for free were required. Guarantees, too, that he would be fully supported while in the United States.</p><p>More information about Donald Leopold's heart was needed; Morrison sent money for a heart sonogram.</p><p>Then with funds Morrison had raised — he declined to be specific about the sources — the brothers traveled to Santa Rosa.</p><p>“This is a dream, because it was a nightmare,” Richardson Leopold said.</p><p>“It was an opportunity to help a young man,” said Morrison, who downplays his own role and emphasizes Sutter's instead. “He looked deserving and I thought I knew people who would be interested in helping, and they were.”</p><p>Sutter officials said Sunday they had yet to arrange the proper legal consent from Leopold that would allow them to comment on his case. </p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com.</p>