KIND DOCTORS HAVE A HEART.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Imagine yourself in his patient's position, the doctor says. A 29-year-old farmer from a poor, rural village in Jamaica flying into Los Angeles last Monday night with absolutely no resources except the hope he was carrying in his damaged heart.

Shawn Bryson shouldn't have been taking that flight alone, the doctor says. Someone from Jamaica should have accompanied him on this emotional journey. But there was no one.

His mother left when Bryson was 3, and he ran away from an abusive father when he was 13. What little money he earned came from the land he farmed to feed his three children. But all that was about to end because he would die soon unless he had immediate heart surgery.

"It had to be so overwhelming for him, stepping off that airplane alone in the first big city he had ever seen -- wondering in the next few days whether he was going to live or die," said Dr. Gholam Mohammadzadeh, a cardiothoracic surgeon who performed Bryson's heart surgery Wednesday at Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center.

The young farmer from Jamaica now is going to live, thanks to the kindness of an Iranian-born doctor and his wife, the president and CEO of the hospital, and the Rotary Club of Conejo Valley Centennial in Westlake Village, whose members cross almost all boundaries and nationalities.

Through their generosity, the world shrank a little last Monday night when Bryson stepped off that plane from Jamaica and found that he was not alone anymore.

Bryson's journey began in the office of Dr. William Foster, a cardiologist in Jamaica searching the Internet for a cardiothoracic heart specialist willing to perform an aortic valve replacement on one of his patients.

The man was a poor farmer. He had no medical insurance, no money. The tremendous cost of the operation and all of the other expenses would have to be shouldered by others. The young man could not pay with anything but a thank you.

Foster knew it was a longshot. The best he could do was try. He studied the Internet pictures of surgeons -- choosing to e-mail only those with "kind eyes," he would say later.

He sent more than a dozen e-mails. Only two surgeons replied with questions. One of them was Dr. Gholam Mohammadzadeh.

"Quite honestly, I wasn't sure if it was a scheme or if it was genuine," Mohammadzadeh said Saturday. "I was a little skeptical, but when I got the additional medical information I asked for from Dr. Foster, I knew it was credible and that time was a factor."

At dinner that night he told his wife, Negen, that he was going to talk to Dale Serowitz, president and CEO of Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center, to see if the hospital would bear the $70,000 to $100,000 in costs for the delicate operation.

Negen, president of her Rotary Club in Westlake Village, said she'd go along to see if she could help.

"Anyone who knows my wife knows that when she wants to she can move mountains," Mohammadzadeh said, laughing.

But Negen didn't have to move any mountains that day. When Serowitz heard the story, he said yes.

"Dale is a wonderful man with a big, soft heart," the doctor says. "After he graciously said the hospital would absorb the cost, my colleagues stepped forward to offer their services for free."

While Mohammadzadeh lined up his surgical team, Negen went to work on her Rotarian friends. The club raised more than $2,000 to pay for Bryson's travel, hotel and other costs. Then they passed around a sign-up sheet to make sure the young Jamaican farmer always had someone visiting him every day he was here.

"The night before the operation we asked him if he wanted to go out for pizza," Negen said. "He said he had never had pizza.

"At the restaurant he kept asking us to tell him if he was doing anything wrong. He had never been to a restaurant, either."

Hours before the surgery Wednesday, Dr. Mohammadzadeh sat with the young farmer to see if he had any last-minute questions.

Only two, he said: Would he be able to return to farming to feed his family, and would he still be alive after the operation?

The doctor smiled and said he was going to do his best to make sure the answer to both questions was yes.

It was a couple of days after the successful operation that a nurse walked into Bryson's room and found him crying.

It wasn't from pain, the young farmer said. It was all the emotions he had kept inside since he stepped off that airplane from Jamaica alone Monday night.

He wasn't alone anymore. He was going home with a healthy heart and a future with his children.

All because a doctor with kind eyes said yes.

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Shawn Bryson, front, of Jamaica underwent life-saving heart surgery performed by Dr. Gholam Mohammadzadeh, back, after a local Rotary Club helped with airfare.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News