Bradley’s Story
Posted in Bradley's Story, CHD Stories on 06. Apr, 2010
Ten little fingers, ten little toes, that is what each Mother counts when a child is born. For those of us who have been through trips to NICU before, we even listen to hear the Apgar Score.
When my son was born, my first thoughts were “Wow, he is huge.” My giant lug of a boy was born 9lbs 4 oz, and that was a week early. He immediately went to screaming, already hungry. I watched as they weighed, measured, took all the appropiate readings, and then rejoiced in my beautiful, healthy boy.
It was a full 24 hours later, before I knew otherwise. 24 hours before I found out, that even though he looked perfect on the outside, inside, my son’s heart was not working. My son had been diagnosed with Ebstein’s Anomaly. A rare (1 in 30,000) heart defect. Harder to hear was that heart defects themselves are not rare – and happen to almost 1 in 100 births.
My son was marked with moderate Ebstein’s and we figured by the time he was 5 he would have to have surgery. In the meantime we had regular echocardiograms,and I watched his heart rate soar. When he was a month old, he was put on a 24 hour heart monitor for a whole month. A tiny ekg machine that recorded everytime is heart rate accelerated.
By the time he was three months old, I knew of the best hospitals in the country for his type of defect. I knew what heart rate to listen for, how much sleep to watch for, and when to call 911.
Our world changed, our lives changed, and we knew they would never be the same.
Then a miracle happened. Slowly, the tricuspid valve started to seperate from the wall of the heart. The complimentary valve started to work a little harder.
With a little seperation, and a little hard work, my son’s heart adapted to him, without the help of a single doctor or medication.
I call him my miracle child. That’s not to say he can’t get worse as he gets more active, or that it will always be this good.
But just for today, right now, my son is doing awesome. And I can breathe a little easier.
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