Bypass or Stents for my Mom!

My name is Kusum Sooriyabandara ( SooriyaB) , and I’m a student in Germany.

My mother lives in Sri Lanka, where all 4 of her coronary arteries are blocked. Sadly, there is no health insurance system there, and life-saving heart surgery — either a bypass or stent procedure — costs a lot of money.

My Mother’s Brave Heart: A Story of Struggle and Survival My mother, Sriyalatha Gamage, is 59 years old. Until December 2024, she lived with what seemed like a normal health condition—quietly carrying the weight of her past, hiding her pain behind gentle smiles and warm meals. But everything changed when she suffered her first heart attack. It shook us to the core. A woman who had endured so much in life was now battling to keep her heart beating. She was only 20 when she married my father, during one of the darkest periods in Sri Lanka’s history—the 1980s. It was a time of unrest, fear, and violence. My father became a victim of this brutality, taken from us by the so-called “Black Cats,” a terror group that brought devastation to countless families. My mother didn’t just lose her husband that day. She lost her safety, her peace, and a part of herself. The physical violence she endured left deep scars, but the emotional trauma was even more lasting. She became quiet, withdrawn. Grief settled in her chest like a stone. And now, decades later, that pain has found its way to her heart—literally. 

Doctors say she needs urgent medical intervention: bypass surgery and stents. Only then can her heart work like it once did. But the truth is, healing her heart requires more than just surgery. She needs emotional healing. She needs peace. After a lifetime of struggle, fear, and silent suffering, she deserves to feel safe again. She deserves to breathe without pain, to sleep without fear, to live without the weight of the past crushing her spirit. 

 My mother is more than her illness. She is a survivor. She is strength wrapped in kindness, a soft voice carrying a heavy story. And now, more than ever, she needs love, support, and hope to find her way back—to a life where her heart can beat not just in rhythm, but in peace. This is not just her recovery. This is her rebirth.

Sri Lanka is a very poor country with limited medical care, and without this operation, my mother’s life is at serious risk.

I work part-time to support myself and have been sending my mother money every month. But I simply cannot afford the full cost of her surgery.

I’m begging for your help to save her heart – and her life.

Any contribution means the world to me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

with love

Kusum Sooriyabandara