Dr. Sandra Iragorri, a pediatric nephrologist at Doernbecher Children's Hospital, is smart about a lot of things. Fluent in English, Spanish and French, she's studied at some of the medical world's prestigious centers of excellence, including Yale University and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Until recently, though, the good doctor was at the low end of the learning curve when it came to two topics:
Teen heartthrobs and Twitter.
Her schooling in those fleeting topics started the Friday before last, when she learned that Justin Bieber, the superstar Canadian singer with the coifed hair and baby face befitting his 18 years, has an upcoming, sold-out concert in Portland.
Iragorri felt a sudden pang -- a symptom shared by girls all over the metro area.
She had to get tickets. HAD to!
She didn't intend to doll herself up and cram into the Rose Garden with the squealing masses on Oct. 8, though. Iragorri yearned to secure those precious seats for a patient who spent all summer in Doernbecher's intensive-care unit, enduring pain, boredom, fear, and repeatedly skirting death.
She wanted them for Vicky Ochoa, the 13-year-old with the life-size cardboard cutout of Bieber looming over her bed.
Ochoa, who lives in Southeast Portland, was born with Alagille syndrome, a rare disorder that affects the liver, heart, kidneys and other systems. Surgeons transplanted her liver when she was a baby. This July, she needed a kidney transplant.
Surgery went well, but that night, sutures securing Ochoa's abnormally fragile blood vessels gave way. She hemorrhaged and was rushed back for life-saving surgery.
Recovering in intensive care, she suffered pulmonary hemorrhages, nearly dying again.
She was still intubated and ventilated when a child-life specialist brought an iPad loaded with a Justin Bieber concert to Ochoa's bed, offering a little normalcy during a tough time.
Her penchant for the star Forbes magazine this year named the world's third most powerful celebrity was obvious to anyone who visited Ochoa. His pictures adorned the walls and that cutout of him seemed to watch over her like some sort of cardboard angel.
The specialist fired up the iPad concert. Tubes snaking down Ochoa's throat kept her from singing along but her eyes, Iragorri recalls, brimmed with joy.
Ochoa wasn't out of the woods, though.
Bleeding left a hematoma next to her kidney. She deteriorated again.
"We were thinking we were going to lose her," Iragorri says, "but she pulled through again, through the efforts of so very many talented people ...
"She's clearly a tough little cookie."
Finally, after surviving so many hurdles, Ochoa was nearly ready to head home. That was about the same time Iragorri learned Bieber would be bringing his act to Portland.
"I thought, 'Oh my God! We have to get her tickets. That would be magnificent. That's what we need,'" Iragorri says.
She consulted Cindy Barshay, the child life specialist who worked with Ochoa once she was out of intensive care. How, she wondered, could they get tickets to a sold-out show?
Sitting side-by-side at a computer, Iragorri and Barshay studied Bieber's fan website. The minute they learned the showman is Canadian, Barshay remembers, Iragorri "whipped out her cell phone" and called a friend who works for Canada's Ministry of Communication. The friend's best advice: Tweet Bieber.
"She offered to help me write a tweet message," Iragorri says, "because I had never tweeted anybody."
Before she knew it, Iragorri was asking everyone from nurses on the floor to the hospital's chief to tweet away, asking Twitter followers for any leads on tickets.
"We all took the ball and started running in our different directions to make it happen," Barshay says. She and colleagues tried contacting radio station Z100, the OHSU Doernbecher Foundation and finally, the Children's Cancer Association.
Bev Tollefson, director of the CCA’s Family Support Program, figured she could simply buy tickets, but consulted with the Rose Quarter box office to see which online ticket-sales site could be trusted. When a box-office employee informed her they’d just opened up a bit more seating for the concert, Tollefson headed straight to the Rose Quarter, snapped up two and drove directly to Doernbecher.
Barshay whipped up a Bieber-themed goodbye card and called all Ochoa's doctors, nurses and therapists to her room. She tucked the tickets, for Ochoa and her mother, Verenice Ochoa, deep inside the card, which folded over repeatedly.
Ochoa's medical condition has left her tiny for her age; she looks more like 8 than 13. But her Bieber passion belies her age and stage. She displays it everywhere from the Bieber-themed T-shirt she wears to the purse she carries, a picture of the pop star sewn into the fabric. She loves, she says, "how he does his hair, how he sings, how he dresses. ..."
Surrounded by her caregivers, she slowly unfolded the card. Inside were two slim strips of paper bearing a date, seat numbers and Bieber's name boldly displayed in the middle.
She responded as any young girl might, faced with entry into the first concert of her life and an evening in the presence of -- well, you know, JUSTIN BIEBER!
"I screamed," Ochoa says, still beaming. "I just screamed."
