Haitian toddler thrives while Dunwoody host parents wait

By Ralph Ellis

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The uncertainties of his life don’t concern 2-year-old Michael Lucien.

Are his parents alive? How many buildings in his Haitian hometown survived the earthquake? How long will he stay in the United States?

One thing is for sure: Michael won’t be going home any time soon.

Childspring International, a Christian charity that brings ailing children to the United States for treatment, flew Michael from Haiti to Atlanta last April for major surgery.

Nancy Ike, her husband, Steve, and the couple’s two daughters, Amelia, 13, and Greyson, 14, opened their Dunwoody home to Michael. They’d served as host families several times before, and Nancy’s expertise as a pediatric nurse made them a good fit.

Michael (pronounced Michelle) suffered intestinal problems, and once here surgeons discovered kidney troubles, Nancy Ike said. It took months to assemble a surgical team, so the operation didn’t happen until August.

He underwent another round of surgery in November. Complications from the second surgery kept Michael in Scottish Rite for a month – which may have saved his life.

“The blessing is that if all went as expected he would have been on a plane last Friday [Jan. 8],” she said.

The Caribbean earthquake struck Tuesday, rendering Michael’s hometown, Petionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, uninhabitable. Nobody knows what happened to his parents, who haven’t been heard from in days.

Michael was one of 26 Haitian children Childspring brought to the United States last year for medical treatment, said Nancy Jackson, a spokeswoman for the charity. He’s one of three Haitian children “stuck” in the United States because of the earthquake.

In Atlanta, Childspring is best known for bringing a little girl called Baby Noor from Baghdad for spinal cord treatment.

The Ikes have never been to Haiti, and they've never communicated directly with Michael’s family in Petionville. Childspring employees in the United States send information to employees stationed in Haiti, who would take updates to the family.

The good news: Michael is healthy and ahead of schedule developmentally. He’s going through “a language explosion” and walks with ease, Ike said. He celebrated his second birthday last week and saw snow – not something that happens to every Haitian child.

“He calls me mom,” she said. “If he really wants my attention he calls me ‘Ancy Ike.’ He’s very animated.”

There’s a co-host family, Bill and Claire Holley, who keep Michael about a third of the time, Ike said. Michael calls Claire “mom” too.

For now, the families wait for Childspring to make contact with Michael's parents.

“The tentative date for him to go home is obviously a floating number now," Ike said. “We don’t want him to go home until its safe.”