Costumed children laughed and frolicked under sunny October skies while the grown-ups caught up over hotdogs and soft drinks.

Part fall festival, part get-together, the Children's Heart Center's Family Reunion brought together young patients and their parents with the cardiologists, surgeons and staff members who worked to keep them healthy. Children's Heart Center is part of Batson Children's Hospital on the campus of the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Hosted at the home of Children's Heart Center Medical Director Dr. Jorge Salazar, the event is a milestone for the center. “This is the first reunion we've had in five and a half years,” Salazar said, “because we've been so busy building a program.”

Patients who are in end-stage liver disease and hoping for a transplant are often weakened, malnourished, losing weight, easily fatigued, and have a diminished quality of life. In the transplant world, they're experiencing “frailty.” But when it comes to deciding who should get a transplant and who should not, and who might be a better bet for doing well after surgery and who might not, should frailty be a top consideration?

Dr. Fred Rushton, a UMMC surgeon, is known for his ability to work as part of a team, facility for memorization and recall, professionalism and dexterity - all of which contribute to his flair for handling a precise and specialized instrument: the clarinet. 

He's also pretty good with a scalpel - as might be expected of the division chief and program director for the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery.

But surgery, as much as he enjoys it, is his job. Music - listening to it and performing it - is his therapy and his thrill.

“When I come home from a bad day,” he said, “I go in my man cave and put on the Mahler symphonies or Beethoven's 7^th. It's how I relax.”

“Relax,” he says. Rushton is so attuned to music, he plays clarinet for three different ensembles: the Mississippi Community Symphony Band; the Mississippi Baptist Symphony Orchestra, which is part of the Mississippi Baptist Convention; and the Worship Orchestra of the First Baptist Church of Jackson, where he's a member

“He's an incredible musician,” said Dr. Lavon Gray, the church's minister of music. “I don't know how he has time to stay up with everything musically, but he obviously does.

“He's also been on medical missions, including to Haiti, where he ran clinics for a team from the church this past July. He's a jovial Christian gentleman who brings joy to anything he touches.”

A number of interesting events is scheduled for the upcoming week at the Medical Center.