Shane was born in December as a healthy full term baby. He made us parents and it was just the perfect timing for him to be born. Nathan had just graduated with his Bachelors and was starting a new Job in January. We had tried for a awhile for him to come to this earth and he was finally here and couldn't be more thrilled. he was in the NICU for typical jaundice until we were both released from the hospital two days later. I laugh now because seeing my son in the NICU made me cry and knowing now how common Jaundice is. He was home for a few days, we spent Christmas together as a family and things were seeming normal. He was eating well and sleeping well. We were in heaven.
Then the day after Christmas in the afternoon he started not eating, sweating and breathing weird. On Dec 26th we were only able to feed him about an ounce that afternoon. As first time parents we knew something was wrong but we weren't sure.We also had his 7 day well check the next day. We didn't know if we should wait or not. After lots of calls to our doctors with no luck. At about 2:00 in the morning Tuesday we went to the ER to find out what was wrong. They got Shane in right away did test after test at about 30mins-hour later they decided they needed to life flight him to Primary Children's Hospital.His temperature was 94.7 and they couldn't read a blood pressure on him. My husband and I both sobbed and within an hour 1/2 Shane could no longer breathe on his own and needed to be put on a ventilator before he could be put in helicopter. I had to look away as they were shoving tubes down my pale lifeless son. We said our goodbyes to our lifeless baby boy not knowing what was next and what the outcome would be. Everyone just kept telling us he was VERY Sick!
After arriving at Primary's they did their tests and found out he was in cardiac arrest. Most people dont know this, but your normal heart function is around 60 when he arrived at Primary's his heart function was at a 10 very very poor.
At this time they diagnosed him with an ASD, VSD holes in the heart, a narrowing in the aorta and Left Ventricular non compaction a poor squeezing ventrical. He was in the ICU for a week in a half before they decided he was strong enough to do surgery. At this time they only repaired the narrowing of the Aorta and put a Pulmonary Band on his pulmonary artery to help lessen blood flow to the body.
They were able to do this surgery through his side because both were areas they could fix out side of the heart. After a couple days after his surgery they did an echo to check his heart function. His heart function was still really poor and they said that 95 % of kids should have recovered by now and basically said he had a 5% chance of not needing a heart transplant. After several days and meeting with the whole heart transplant team Shane kept doing better and better.
