This year I had the opportunity to experience the Yuppi camps from a different perspective. The story of a doctor.

Last year, for the first time, we welcomed children with heart diseases into the Yuppi camps. And for this to become a reality, many people helped us, including Dr. Laura Beligan, a pediatric cardiologist at the Emergency Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases and Transplantation in Târgu Mureș.

Laura has been with us since the very beginnings of Yuppi Camp — she was the association's doctor and a volunteer in the camps. For the past few years she hasn't been able to join us in person, but we constantly feel her care and involvement: she does everything she can to send new children to the camps, recommends to her patients that they come, and dreams and works toward the day when children with complex congenital heart defects can also attend.

"This year I had the opportunity to experience the Yuppi camps from a different perspective — the perspective of the doctor who sends patients, ill children, to camp," she wrote to us last summer after the camp.

"I was on edge throughout the entire camp, and today my phone filled up with thank-you messages from the children I sent — my patients. They are happy, relaxed, and thrilled that I chose them. They had a great time," she adds.

Along with this message, Laura also shared a few messages from parents — you can see these in the screenshots. 📲

In December, Laura wrote to us again, this time from the perspective of a doctor who sees these children both before and after camp.

"I have known Erik since he was 3 days old. We meet periodically. Sometimes we talk with his parents about things that weigh on us, we find strength and move forward. We look for solutions. Other times we have pleasant meetings too. The most beautiful moments are when he comes in for a check-up and I can tell his parents: he's doing well, we carry on like this. But what I love even more is watching him grow, mature, become a 'big boy' — that he is a cheerful child, goes to kindergarten, and does activities just like any child his age. 'Thank you for thinking of us and sending us to Yuppi Camp. It was wonderful!' Those were the most beautiful words I received from Erik's parents," she wrote to us.

Laura, thank you for dreaming, for working, for hoping — for Yuppi. Thank you for all the families and children you have sent to camp. Thank you for helping us — and continuing to help us — reach children with heart diseases, to offer them too the camp experience, the chance at a real childhood.