Joshua, born 2013

We found out at a routine sonogram that our son had transposition of the great arteries and a ventricular septal defect. When he went for the second follow up echocardiogram they said it appeared that the VSD was getting smaller.

 

When he was born on September 9th, they realized that the VSD had actually closed before birth requiring Joshua to be life flighted to another hospital. Before I even got to see him, he had to have an emergency balloon septostomy. It would be over twenty four hours before I got to see him.

 

They got him stabilized and by the time Joshua was four days old, he had his big surgery done, an arterial switch. When they did the switch they found out that all of his coronary arteries were reversed as well so his four hour surgery took an hour longer. After surgery he was so swollen that it took three days before they could close his heart. Joshua was then diagnosed with Chylothorax which wiped away my hopes of giving him breast milk because he had to be on a special low fat diet. We got through the hurdle of learning to feed, gaining weight when and he finally got to come home when he was 2 ½ weeks old. A week later he had to be admitted into the hospital again because a routine echo check up found that his heart was not contracting when he cried. He had a cath to check his surgical repair and they saw everything was fine. They determined he had high blood pressure and prescribed aspirin, Lasix, and Captopril. Today, he is doing well!

 

Story by Joshua’s mom, Jessica - Pennsylvania