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RAISING
ZACHARY
A
child like Zachary had just a 50/50 chance of survival
in the 1980's.
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Within
a week, Zachary was ready to go home to Charlottesville, VA.
"He
did great," Karen recalls. "He nursed really well. He's a
little bruiser."
In
the months before his next surgery, Zachary had the chance
to bond with his older sister, Emily, just fifteen months
his senior. Karen's not sure how the ordeal affected their
first child, a sensitive, talkative little girl, but she does
know that at 20 months, Emily was performing heart surgery
on her favorite stuffed animal.
"That stuffed kitty goes everywhere," sighs Karen, "Is it
normal? I don't know, but I think it's her security because
we left her three times."
Though
his open-heart surgery had left him with a painful wound nearly
the length of his tiny body, Zachary required no special care.
Karen and Rob tried to treat him like any other baby, but
neither is too sure they succeeded.
"I
like to think I treated him the same, but I don't really think
I did," Karen confesses. "If he had a temperature, we'd be
at the pediatrician's office."
BACK
TO BOSTON
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Surgeons
at Boston's Children's Hospital mend Zach's heart |
At just five months old, Zachary was ready for his second
surgery in October 1998. Known as a Bidirectional Glenn, it
is the first step in re-routing the blood around the heart.
The procedure diverts blue blood from the head and upper body
directly into the lungs, bypassing the heart and relieving
it of a significant amount of work. The surgery went smoothly,
but little Zach was not out of the woods yet. He would still
need a final operation to divert the blue blood from the lower
part of this body to the lungs. Because this re-routing involves
so much blood, doing so requires that a child's lungs be more
developed. He and his family would have to wait.
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