Jason’s Story

 

My son Jason Hoffman was born June 9,2009 When he was born he was blue all over. After staying at the hospital for the required 4 days we was released to go home. I knew something was wrong with him but the doctors all kept telling me he was fine just had a little jaundice and was had to go into the doctor the next day to test his jaundice levels and see of they had gone down. When we went to the doctor the next day they said his levels was still up and we needed to return back the following day for another test. That night he was not much for eating and still had a blue tint to him and in the middle of the night he started choking on his own salivia. I told the doctors that they needed to do more test because something was not right. They finally checked him out and told me that he had a slight heart murmor but was nothing to worry about they go away on there own but they was gonna go ahead and do a echocardiogram just to make sure but they was sure he was fine. The next evening around 4:50 pm I recieved a phone call from Arkansas Childrens Hospital saying that I needed to have Jason there at 8 in the morning. I ask the lady if there was something wrong since I had yet to hear from the doctor where I live and she said no Dr. Best just wants to get to know your son. The next morning we got up at 5 am to start our drive to ACH. After arriving to ACH they did another echo on him and 3 different doctors came in to review it then they sent us to another room to wait for Dr. Best. I will never forget the words out of Dr. Best as he entered the room the first time I ever met him he says “There is something wrong with your son but I can fix it” my heart sank into my chest and I asked what is wrong with him? He says no one told you before you got here? I said no. (the doctors where I lived was supose to tell me but they didn’t instead they refused to see him anymore) So he proceeds to tell me my son has a VSD, ASD and His pulmonary valve was narrow due to only having 2 sleeves instead of 3. They place him on some lasiks and our goal was to et him to 6 months of age so he could gain some weight and be better prepared for the surgery. We went for checkups to ACH every 2 weeks and he made it to 2 1/2 months then they had no choice but to do the surgery he was not gaining weight he was losing weight. September 1, 2009 he went in for his surgery and was in surgery for 7 hours. He was out of surgery for approx an hour and we got to go back and visit with him for the 1st time. We was back there visiting and hadn’t been back there 5 minutes and the paged the surgeon 911 in panic I asked what’s wrong and one of the nurses said his chest is filling with blood. The surgeon comes in and tells me that is was probably a stitch or something they will take him back and fix it. They came into the waiting area to update us after he was out for the 2nd time and he said the pacemaker wires that they had placed in him was cutting a hole into his aorta and the hole was getting bigger everytime the heart would beat. He was on the vent for 7 days, then day 8 we went to the step down unit! Today he is a healthy child they have to watch him and make sure the patches grow with him and since they stretched the pulmonary vavle instead of cutting and patching it they have to make sure

it doesn’t narrow back out. So far so good. God works miracle and so does ACH!!

 

Kayla Hoffman