“No I would not give you false hope, on this strange and mournful day
But the mother and child reunion is only a motion away…”
— Paul Simon, Mother & Child Reunion
(Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series detailing the birth and heart surgery of Transcript reporter M. Scott Carter’s son, Zachary.)
OKLAHOMA CITY — It’s said that the heart — both spiritually and physically — is the essence of our human existence.
Spiritually, the heart is the repository of grace; the lockbox of the soul. The direct connection with the Almighty. For ages, humans have been classified by the quality — the worth, if you will — of their heart.
“She has a good heart,” people will say of a giving woman.
Or, “he’s got the heart of a lion” — high praise for a man of courage and resourcefulness.
Our hearts, we are taught, make us who we are.
On the physical side, the heart is THE muscle of the body. It pulls in blood needing oxygen, shoves it down to the lungs were the oxygen is infused, then pushes that oxygenated blood back out to the rest of the body.
You can live without some organs or limbs; a good friend has only one kidney. I’ve known people with only one lung or who were missing a leg.
But the heart is vital. Without it, we are just tissue with no warmth. Remove our heart and we die.
And so, to be truly human, our hearts must be both physically and spiritually intact.
A point I was reminded of over the past two weeks.
•
I’m sitting in a tan and brown waiting room. It’s small, with several industrial type chairs and one big, overstuffed couch.
There are no windows, just one door, a telephone and a small color television mounted near the ceiling.
There are pamphlets and some magazines which are several years old.
It’s Tuesday, Nov. 20th — two days before Thanksgiving. One week and one day since the birth of my son, Zachary.
For most families — including mine — the birth of a child is a time to celebrate. A new baby is affirmation by God that the world should continue.
Most of the time.
But for my family, this celebration is bittersweet.
Zach was born with several life-threatening heart problems.
And right now we’re waiting to see if those problems can be solved.
•
Karen and I had wanted another baby, we’d talked about it for more than a year, then decided, the time was right.
She told me she was pregnant sometime in late February. And for the first few months, we were elated. Our 20s were a long distant memory, and we are both well past our 30s. Still, having already raised three kids, one more wasn’t going to be a problem. We knew what we were doing.
At least that’s what we thought.
The first few doctor visits went great.
Karen was classified as a “high risk” because of her age, but since we were in good health we didn’t worry.
Everything changed in July.
An Ultrasound showed Zach had a major heart defect. At first, we watched the grainy images of him sucking his thumb then listened, stunned, as the doctor destroyed our euphoria.
“There is a serious heart defect,” he said. His next few statements were blurred and misty.
Finally, he brought us to our knees. “If you’d like to terminate this pregnancy, I can help you make arrangements,” he said.
I could hardly believe what I heard, the world seemed surreal. The silence was broken only by Karen’s sobs.
I looked at her and she shook her head, “no.”
We had chosen our path. But as we drove home in the rain, our dreams lay in ruin.
Two days later we found a faint glimmer of hope.
Dr. Kent Ward, a Oklahoma pediatric cardiologist, explained Zach’s problems in detail.
“Instead of four chambers in the heart, you child only has three,” Dr. Ward said. “There’s a single chamber on the bottom of the heart instead of two.”
There also were other issues.
Zach has a defect called Patent Ductus Arteriosus — an abnormal circulation of blood between the two major arteries near the heart.
According to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, PDA causes a blood vessel called the ductus arteriosus to remain open. This opening allows blood to flow directly from the aorta into the pulmonary artery. The process can be a strain on the heart and increase the blood pressure in the lung’s arteries.
PDA would be the first problem Dr. Ward and his team would tackle — the first of three separate heart operations.
The second problem was even worse.
Known as Transposition of the Great Vessels, this condition is a defect where the heart’s two major vessels — the pulmonary artery and the aorta — are switched.
Because of the switch, blood does not travel from the lungs to the body and back to the lungs again. Instead, the blood flow in the lungs and blood flow in the body occur independently.
The result, Dr. Ward said, is the blood with the oxygen from the lungs does not get to the heart where it feeds the rest of the body. The blood that goes through the body lacks oxygen.
A second surgery — planned when Zach is about six months old — would address this problem.
The third, and final surgery would correct Zach’s single ventricle. That surgery would take place around the age of 2.
Doctor Ward walked Karen and I through the process, answered a million questions and helped us get a grip on our fear.
“I’ve been doin’ this for 20 years,” he said. “It’s going to be OK. Your baby might not grow up to be a star athlete but he’ll be OK.”
Karen asked about the survival rate of the surgeries. Doctor Ward smiled.
“95 to 98 percent,” he said.
Outside the rain stopped.
•
Kenneth Zachary Clark Carter — the double middle name is a family tradition — was born at 8:45 a.m. Nov. 12 at the Univeristy of Oklahoma Children’s Hospital.
Zach weighed 6 pounds, 13.5 ounces and was 19 inches long. He has a head of beautiful red hair, 10 perfect little feet and toes, a round funky little nose and a beautiful, cherubic face.
He also came into the world with an attitude.
Born breech, Zach promptly announced his arrival on planet Earth by peeing on his doctor.
The nurses in the operating room — and there were many given his heart condition — laughed out loud and encouraged him to take another shot at the doctor who delivered him.
“This boy has an attitude,” one nurse said. “What a kid.”
As she laughed, the nurse gently handed me my son.
And there, for a brief, small moment, I held him. I touched his tiny nose and stood amazed at this brand new human.
From her hospital bed, Karen asked if Zach was OK. I placed his small, round face next to her. Gently, she stroked Zach’s cheek.
For those few seconds, the world was perfect.
Mother, child and father, all together. We had come full circle, once again.
But all too quickly, the moment ended.
Zach was taken to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit on the seventh floor, Karen was sent to a recovery room on the fifth floor.
She wouldn’t see her son again for two days.
And then a race against time began.
•
No matter how often the medical professionals told me things would “be all right” I couldn’t find the strength to believe them.
My faith was almost gone. I felt like I had been beaten and twisted. I was angry and not a whole lot of fun to be around.
Conversations with family and friends were strange and meaningless.
Instead of celebrating my son’s birth, I spent my days in his hospital room, staring at a computer screen.
After she was strong enough, I’d get Karen and we would trek to the NICU and sit next to Zach’s bedside.
Seeing him there was tough; a series of wires connected him to a computer which monitored his heart rate, respiration and blood oxygen levels.
IVs were placed his arm and heel, and a central line entered his body through his umbilical cord. For the next week Zach would receive a drug called prostaglandin, which helped the blood flow through his lungs and body.
Day after day I watched numbers flicker on the computer monitor.
177, 48, 81, 79. They changed by the second, a digital representation of Zach’s first week in the world.
177 — his heart rate; 48 — the number of breaths he takes; 81 — the percentage of oxygen in the blood flowing into his heart; 79 — the percentage flowing out.
Four numbers I couldn’t seem to escape.
Four numbers that were the sum of my infant son’s life.
Four numbers which I would grow to hate.
Occasionally, the numbers would drop below a pre-set level. When that happened, the computer was programed to sound an alarm — a signal that one of the numbers was too low.
The alarm chimed the first few times.
But if Zach’s numbers didn’t adjust quickly, the sound became more frantic and the machine rang a telephone carried by each nurse in the ward. When the phone rang, the nurses came running.
Over the course of the week I’d get well acquainted of the chime of the monitor and the sound of a nurse scurring down the hall.
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