Column: Oglala Sioux boy with heart problem wants to dance

A young patient from the Oglala Sioux Tribe gets to see a cardiologist:
She sits silently as the doctor from faraway Omaha takes her grandson's pulse, orders X-rays and blood tests, looks and listens and feels little Judson Two Crow's sputtering heart every way he knows how.

But now the Omaha doctor has asked for questions, and so the Lakota grandmother who has lived her entire life in the back country of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, like her mother before her and her mother's mother before that, lifts her eyes and nods her head.

Yes. Grandma has one question.

“We want him to start dancing,” she says in a voice barely above a whisper. “His family dances. Can he do this? Is his heart strong enough?”

Dr. John Kugler raises his eyebrows. Juanita Two Crow waits for his answer.

Get the Story:
Matthew Hansen: Cardiology teams fly from Omaha to help Pine Ridge children (The Omaha World-Herald 4/28)

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