Riley

Riley Children's Hospital is where I pretty much lived the first 5 years of my life. I remember playing with the kitchen set while waiting for my next exam in the radiology department. The glass elevator that we would ride up and down just to have some fun. It was amazing because we could see out of it and I loved looking at all the Disney dolls they had hung up in the main room of the hospital. The best thing was when my family would share the bed with me to bring me comfort. There were many nights dad and I would sleep together and then of course my grandma and brother Aj would share apart of the bed to play games with me. Those are the moments I remember the most not the pain....But it was also the hospital that kept me alive and thanks to the wonderful physicians, especially Doctor John Brown, and nurses who gave me life.

Here is my early years story: Where it all began
December of 1988 is when the doctors heard a heart murmur at 4 months old.
On June 8 1989 I had a physical exam with Pediatric Cardiology and during the exam the doctor noted I appeared to be a healthy toddler with clear lungs a healthy weight and lots of curiosity. Until she did an echo which revealed sever sub-aortic stenosis. An x- ray showed upper normal heart size and normal pulmonary vascularity and an EKG revealed a sinus rhythm with left ventricular hypertrophy  in a strained pattern. They then scheduled me for a cardiac catheterization on July 21, 1989 where they would also give me my diagnosis and Dr. Brown then felt like an apical aortic  conduit was the right surgery for me. On September 1,1989 I had an apical aortic conduit inserted. October 19, 1990 I went back to the operating room because I had conduit obstruction. They took me back to the operating room they then   placed a shunt from the thoracic aorta and opened the distal anastomosis. They also placed a gortex patch over the distal anastomosis because they found I had a rather marked fibromuscular hyperplasia of the distal end of the homo graft conduit distal anastomosis. Basically they placed the shunt to clamp it and then patched up my conduit with something like surgical dressings. April 17,1991 admitted for repairs to the conduit. On April 25,1991 I was taken again to the operating room where they put me through a standard cadiopulmanary bypass, using both antigrade and retrograde cardioplegia, an inspection of my aortic valve which was thickened had the most significant discrete fibromuscular subaortic stenosis that the surgeon had ever seen. I then underwent resection of the membrane and a septal myotomy with dilation. The procedure went well and I was taken off bypass. From 1991 to 1995 I did good with the surgeries as a toddler and medication.
 March, 28,1995 I had a ventricular septaplasty and was admitted to Riley. During post op it was found that I had complete heart block and a very slow underlying heart rate and this is when I received my first pacemaker.