Foster Dad Dedicates Life To Care For Neglected Terminally Ill Children

A foster dad has dedicated his life to care for neglected terminally ill children.

Mohamed Bzeek, 62, is a quiet, devout Libyan-born Muslim. He has a long, dark beard, a soft voice, and he definitely has a soft heart for terminally ill children to make them feel loved until their last breath.

Melissa Testerman, a DCFS intake coordinator, knows there is a serious need for foster parents to care for such children, but there is only one person like Mr Bzeek.

“If anyone ever calls us and says, ‘This kid needs to go home on hospice,’ there’s only one name we think of. He’s the only one that would take a child who would possibly not make it,” she said.

The LA Times reported that Mr Bzeek, 62, came to the US from Libya as a college student in 1978. He later met a woman named Dawn, who was a foster parent in the early 1980s, before she met him.

She opened her home as an emergency shelter for foster children who needed immediate placement or who were placed in protective custody.

She later became Mr Bzeek’s wife.

The Bzeeks opened their home to dozens of children. They taught classes on foster parenting – and how to handle a child’s illness and death – at community colleges, but it was not until 1990s when the couple decided to specifically care for terminally ill children who had do-not-resuscitate orders because no one else would take them in.

“The key is, you have to love them like your own. I know they are sick. I know they are going to die. I do my best as a human being and leave the rest to God,” Mr Bzeek said.

However, in 1997, Mr Bzeek’s only biological son, Adam, was born with brittle bone disease and dwarfism. He was a child so fragile that changing his nappies or his socks could break his bones. Now 19, Adam weighs about 30kg. When at home, he gets around the house on a skateboard his father made for him out of a miniature ironing board, zooming across the wood floor, steering with his hands.

Around 2000, Dawn became ill, suffering from powerful seizures that would leave her weak for days. She died in 2014.

Mr Bzeek continued what he and Dawn started and after more than two decades of being a foster parent, he has already buried about 10 children. Some died in his arms.

Now, he spends long days and sleepless nights caring for a bedridden six-year-old girl born with an encephalocele, a rare malformation in which part of her brain protruded through an opening in her skull.

Dr Suzanne Roberts, the girl’s paediatrician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, explained that neurosurgeons removed the protruding brain tissue shortly after the girl’s birth, but much of her brain remains undeveloped.

She’s blind and deaf. She has daily seizures. Her arms and legs are paralysed. Her head is too small for her body, which is already too small for her age. She has been in Mr Bzeek’s care since she was a month old. Before her, he cared for three other children with the same condition. “These kids, it’s a life sentence for them,” he said.

Dr Roberts has known Mr Bzeek for years and has seen many of his foster children. By the time this girl turns 2, she said, there were no more interventions to improve her condition.

But the girl, who is hooked to feeding and medication tubes at least 22 hours a day, has lived as long as she has because of Bzeek, the doctor said.

“Her life is not complete suffering. She has moments where she’s enjoying herself and she’s pretty content. And it’s all because of Mohamed,” Dr Roberts said.

Source: Essentialbaby.com.au