My Hero

I am sure most people have a story about how wonderful their moms are, and how much she means to them. In fact, I am sure that every story entered in this contest deserves to win. So, in no way, do I think my story is better than any other stories you might read but maybe just a little different. However, in order to tell about how amazing my mom is I have to tell you a little bit about me because my story only exists because my mom sacrificed everything to make it happen. Without my mom being the embodiment of what a superhero truly is I would not be alive today to tell you about her. I am sure that no matter how detailed of a story I write I can never truly express the depths or lengths my mom went to, or the sacrifices she made, to make sure I had a chance in this life. She is not only my hero, but the epitome of the selfless nature all moms represent to their children.

When I was born the doctors told my mom I had only 5 weeks to live. As a parent, I can only imagine the anxiety and fear that must have rushed over her as she sat in a room full of specialists, looking for help, only to find them telling her there was no hope. At the time, the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me. All they knew was my heart was failing, and there was nothing they could do for me. They told my mother to take me home and enjoy the time she had with me. Seems almost barbaric now with how far modern medicine has come, and with all the monumental leaps we have taken in pediatric care, however, for my mom, in 1981, the doctors had no answers. But even if every doctor in the world crushed her soul that day she was not going to give up. She was determined to make sure I survived despite what the experts said.

In Costa Mesa California, on February 25th, 1981, my mom welcomed me into this world with open arms. What should have been tender-hearted moments with the birth of a new baby boy soon turned into concern. She could tell within the first couple days something was wrong. I was having severe difficulties breathing, and it seemed like every time I laid down my body started shutting down. Intuitively, my mom, started keeping me upright at all times. She would later learn this was the only thing keeping me alive. When it was nap time, she would sit me up in a car seat, and keep my body upright at all times rather than laying me flat on my stomach or back. When I wasn’t asleep, she would carry me around in a baby carrier strapped to her chest all dat. If that wasn’t enough stress, I couldn’t seem to eat much, and often I would lose consciousness. She brought me to dozens of doctors to see what was going on, and at 4 weeks I was visiting pediatric cardiologists to get EKGs done.

It seemed like every time I was jarred a little my heart would start having trouble, and my body would start shutting down, and she was determined to make sure I was cared for with kid-gloves. Even while the cardiologists did their tests my mom never left my side. She stayed with me every step of the way watching to make sure I was moved delicately and with love. When one cardiologist in particular had finished with his tests he pulled my mom into his office to give her the heartbreaking news. He told her my heart was failing. He told her the tests showed I was born with a very large hole in my heart which was causing my heart to give out. Unfortunately, because of how weak I was physically, and how little I weighed, there was no way I would survive surgery. He said there were other things wrong with me as well and he wasn’t exactly sure what they were, but they were compounding the heart issues. He looked her right in her face and said “take him home and enjoy his company because he won’t live past 5 weeks.” Heartbroken my mom took me home.

I can only imagine what must have been going through her mind. The confusion, the pain, the utter disappointment. I am sure in her mind she somehow felt like she failed me. I sometimes picture her sitting there staring at me in that car seat wondering what to do next. It would have been easy for her to do nothing. No one would have second guessed her if she just gave up and waited for me to die. She could have held me, comforted me, and then mourned me when I was gone. She could have moved on with her life afterwards, and maybe within a few years I would have been a distant memory, a child she once had but was gone too soon. After all, people die every day. It doesn’t make it easier, and I’m sure the pain stays with someone forever, but things happen in this world that are out of our control. All of these things would have been normal for her to accept, and no one would have judged her. But that was not my mom.

Within a few hours of leaving the cardiologist my mom was already thinking of ways to keep me alive. She knew I was extremely weak, and could barely eat, but she believed if she could just keep me alive for just one more day, I could get stronger. So, that became her goal. Not to keep me alive for a lifetime but for just one more day. She fed me small increments every hour on the hour. She set her alarm for every hour to make sure I never missed a feeding and did her best to learn just how much I could eat every time. Too much and I would throw it all up. Too little and I would continue to lose weight. She kept me upright at all times, and I was never allowed to lay down like other kids. I slept propped up in a car seat, or I was carried around by her 24 hours a day. I never left her sight. One day turned into two, two days into a week, and a week turned into months. Soon 6 months had gone by and I was still here with her. It was time to go back to the cardiologist.

At the appointment with the cardiologist everyone was shocked I was still alive. They couldn’t believe I had survived as long as I did and were astonished at the depths my mom went to keep me that way. Keeping my upright kept the pressure off my heart which allowed it to keep beating, and even though I was still underweight I had gained enough to keep my body functioning. I still had a long road ahead of me but my mom knew it was possible and nothing was going to stop her now.

At 10 months old my family moved to Ohio, which ended up being a perfect. There was a renowned specialist in the local area who ended up being my family doctor, and the Cleveland Clinic, which was one of the best pediatric heart hospitals in the country was right up the road. These became places we regularly visited as everyone tried to figure out all that was wrong with me, and how to fix it.

My mom went through many sleepless nights watching over me as I struggled in my sleep, and even though she got me past the dreaded 5 weeks the cardiologist thought would kill me there was still a lot wrong with me. My heart still had a significant hole interfering with its rhythm and strength. Instead of beating my heart would make a loud swishing sound as the blood moved around inside due to the hole. On top of that, there was something short-circuiting my body. If I stumbled, or fell, my heart would immediately stop. The jarring nature of just a simple bump could cause my heart to give out, and my mom was continually doing CPR on me to bring me back. In fact, she got so good at it, most of the time she wouldn’t even bring me to the hospital afterwards. One such time was at a church softball game. I was playing with the other kids in the field when one of the kids ran into me, and as soon as I hit the ground my heart stopped. As everyone else panicked, and called 911, my mom came running to me. People were trying to stop her, wanting her to wait for the paramedics, but my mom had become an expert at this. She scooped me up and ran away from everyone else into the woods. Once she was away from everyone, she laid me down and performed CPR on me. Within in a few moments, to the utter shock of everyone at the game, she walked out of the woods with me holding her hand.

Every time my heart stopped my body would lose all control of its functions. This usually resulted in some sort of seizure and then loss of bowl functions. After my mom would bring me back, I would suffer a splitting headache for a couple of hours, and then I would be back to normal...well, as normal as I could be. I wasn’t allowed to run, play, or do things other kids did. In order for me to stay alive my mom had to care for me every second of the day. She knew if she wasn’t around, and my heart stopped, it would probably mean the end. So, for years she became my personal superhero regularly saving my life. This, of course, was while she took care of all the rest of her kids as well.

If it seems like my mom could only possible have given me the care that I needed if I was her only child then I believe you would have been correct.... had it been any other mom. Instead, my mom, did these things while balancing the duties of taking care of 4 other kids.

I was the second oldest of 5 children my mom had with my father (she had 4 more later on in life for a grand total of 9). On top of taking care of me she had to take care of my 4 other brothers and sisters. How she balanced these duties was absolutely beyond me even to this day. I can only imagine the stress that overwhelmed her on a regular basis. Here she was trying to keep a child alive, who all the doctors said would never make it, while she was trying to adhere to the needs of 4 other kids with different personalities. What made matters worse was my father. To put it nicely he was not a kind man, and the abuse we endured at his hands still carries its scars to this day.

The first time my father beat me I wasn’t even born. When my mom was pregnant with me my father decided they shouldn’t have another child. He decided the way to do this was to beat my mother and punch her repeatedly in the stomach hoping she would have a miscarriage. Now I don’t know if this was the cause of all my health problems after I was born, but I’m sure it didn’t help. He would beat my mother routinely with fists, belts, or frying pans right in front of us, and he would do the same to us as well. Once he tried to spank me and my brothers' private parts with a belt for peeing outside. We shook in fear as we stood on our tip-toes placing our private parts on the kitchen table waiting for him to beat it with his belt. Thankfully our mother saved us from the beating by tackling him to the ground to stop him. This of course was at a huge cost to her since now she got the beating for us. There wasn’t a lot of laws protecting kids and spouses from abuse when I was a kid, and my dad ruled the house with fear. When he wasn’t beating us, he would torture us with extreme punishments. A favorite of his was the corner. Parents often have to separate siblings and put them in timeouts, and sometimes that time out is making them stand in the corner and think about their actions. My father did the same thing only his corner punishment would result in us standing in there for hours. It was not uncommon for him to make us stand in the corner with our noses touching the wall for 4, 5, 6, or even 8 hours. Sometimes he would even put a bottle cap or penny on the wall that we had to hold up with our noses for the entire time. If you fell asleep, or if your legs gave out, or if the bottle cap/coin would fall he would beat us. One time, after many hours, I fell asleep while standing in the corner, and started to slump over. In front of everyone he picked the broom up he was using to sweep the floor, and threw it at me from across the room. It speared me in my back and immediately my heart stopped, and my mom had to do CPR to bring me back. These were daily occurrences in our home.

Once my brother was bugging my dad too much. Unbenounced to me, I entered the room, went up to him and tapped on him from behind wanting to ask a question. Thinking it was my brother messing with him again he turned around and kicked me in the chest sending me flying across the room. Instantly my heart stopped! Only this time, after CPR was administered by mom, she couldn’t get me to wake up. The CPR worked and my heart started beating again but my eyes were still closed and I was unresponsive. She begged my dad to call 911 but he refused. He said he didn’t want the police snooping around in his business, and as I laid there on the floor lifeless my mom continued to beg my dad to help her. He eventually agreed as long as she told the police I had fallen, and when she agreed, 911 was called. This was our life.

Over the first 9 years of my life my heart stopped over 70 times as my mom tried desperately to keep me alive. Every time she performed CPR, she was worried if it was going to be the last time I woke up. Doctors told her that even if she kept me alive the damage from my heart repeatedly stopping would cause permeant brain damage. They tried explaining to her that even if she succeeded there was a high chance, because of the lack of oxygen to the brain, that I would become mentally handicapped or end up in a vegetative state the rest of my life. However, she refused to let this stop her and she did everything she could to keep me alive and give me a chance.

It is easy to look at this from the outside and think how horrific it must have been. For her, for me, for everyone around us. And, having lived it I can attest that it was. However, I always wonder how much more horrific it would have been had my mom not been there to save me. Was life hard? Very. But she knew someday I would be grown and could get away from all this. I could start a family of my own and raise them differently. I could show them the love she showed me, and prove to the world nothing was impossible. It was that unwavering dedication and love that kept me going, and without her I would have never made it.

Eventually she had the courage to leave my dad despite the death threats, and abuse, and start a new life. She kept me going to the Cleveland Clinic twice a year in the hopes they could figure out what was stopping my heart, and I would live a long healthy life someday.

The doctors knew I had a hole in my heart, but that wasn’t what was causing my heart to stop. There was something else wrong with me and my mom had every doctor in the world looking at me trying to figure it out. By 9 years old my heart was in bad shape, and was starting to form what they thought was a second hole. They knew I desperately needed heart surgery but without figuring why my heart was stopping it was like doing the surgery in a minefield blind. My mom moved us up to the Ronald McDonald house next to the Cleveland Clinic so they could do more tests on me, but nothing seemed to work. One day my mom was packing us up to go home when the doctors asked her to come back to the hospital for one last test. When we arrived at the hospital, they laid me onto a bed and hooked me up to another EKG machine. A half dozen doctors were in the room when another man walked in. He was a world-renowned Neurologist who had an idea about me. While my mother sat in a chair and watched he walked up to me and told me to close my eyes. He then proceeded to jam both his thumbs into my eye sockets. Immediately my heart stopped and I started convulsing on the bed. My mom was horrified and watched in shock as the doctors began to celebrate as I laid dead on the bed. They immediately performed CPR and brought me back and then explained to my mom that the reason my heart was stopping was because of the vagus nerve in my brain.

The Vagus Nerve was a nerve that separates the two halves of our brains and runs the length of our spines all the way to the rectum. My vagus nerve was either partially detached, or just immature, and causing my body to short-circuit when it got jarred. Because of my heart problem this meant my heart was too weak and would stop when my body short-circuited. The doctors explained this problem could eventually fix itself. However, the bigger problem was they discovered the second hole in my heart was actually my heart valve getting sucked into my first hole. They told my mom that I need emergency surgery. So, in 1990, on the week of Thanksgiving, after nine years I finally had surgery to repair my heart.

The surgery was a success!!! After years of my mom staying up all night, feeding me, keeping me upright, and preforming CPR on me over and over and over again I was finally fixed. It turned out the vagus nerve was just immature, and it resulted in me suffering headaches the rest of my life. However, it had no bearing on the heart surgery and at 9 years old I was able to go home and finally be a normal kid. My mom, the superhero, had given up 9 years of her life to make sure I would have a chance at life. Despite the doctors telling her I would never make it, despite the doctors telling her I would never have a good quality of life even if I did survive, and despite all the odds stacked against her she never gave up on me! I'm not sure what the true definition of a Boss Mom is, but I’m pretty sure my mom’s face should be next to the description. What she did for me goes beyond any words I can write in this story, and it goes beyond any attempts I make of continually thanking her. She has taught me to never give up, and to always look for a way to push forward. She has taught me that no matter what life throws at you it is up to you to make the best of it, and with determination all things are possible. She is my hero, and because of her unwavering love and dedication I am now 40 years old with the privilege of telling you how much I love her.