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HomeMy WebLinkAboutHuron Expositor, 2016-02-17, Page 7Beating the odds: Asher Britton's battle with congenital heart disease )171-lircralcicihas tough start to life Galen Simmons Postmedia Network When most people think about a person who has a heart disease or someone who has to undergo open heart surgery, the image of the per- son who comes to mind is usually someone in their 60's or older, who is perhaps overweight, and maybe even smokes. It's a completely different story, however, when a baby is born with a congenital heart disease, as five- year-old Asher Britton was on Oct. 10, 2010. Asher, who was later diag- nosed with CHARGE Syndrome (an acronym where each letter stands for a different symptom), was born with several serious congenital heart defects that doctors could only rem- edy through three open heart surger- ies and a catheter lab procedure. Just in time for heart To heart International Children's Medical Alliance's Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Week from Feb. 7-14, Asher's mom Lisa decided to share with The Advocate the story of how her son managed to beat all odds and not only survive the defects he was born with, but thrive after doc- tors managed to save his life. Asher is Lisa and Jesse Britton's third child, of Dublin, and Lisa says her pregnancy with him was as nor- mal as the first two and her prenatal doctors didn't suspect that anything was wrong based on the ultrasounds. After she went into labour, doctors performed an emergency cesarean section at Stratford General Hospital because Asher's heart was not toler- ating the birth. "Everything seemed fine after delivery, he was in my room with me. I was kept a little bit longer because of the C-section, and around the 30 -hour mark a nurse came to the door," Lisa recalled. "We had some concerns (prior) but everything sort of had an answer for it - so he had blue hands and feet, and they said that it's probably the ink from his handprints and footprints, and then his blood pressures weren't the same on each side, which is a big sign that something's up, and he also had a murmur when they listened to his heart, but a lot of newborns do have a murmur because they haven't closed yet, so again that was easily explained. "So it was late at night and the nurse came to the door - she didn't even come into the room - she looked at him and she said, 'Does he always breathe that quickly?' And I said yeah." Lisa then told the nurse that she had been trying to feed Asher, but the milk kept pouring out of his mouth. The nurse, realizing some- thing was amiss, decided to call the pediatrician so she could conduct a chest X-ray to see if Asher might have a chest infection, which could explain the rapid breathing. When the X-ray came back, how- ever, the pediatrician noticed that Asher's heart seemed a little differ- ent from a normal newborn's. "It was one o'clock in morning and she said we're sending him right to London to see the cardiolo- gist, Lisa said. "I wasn't discharged at that point so my husband fol- lowed the ambulance to London:' The cardiologist in London met with Jesse almost right away and told him that Asher had a severe heart defect called interrupted aortic arch - which means that the top of the aortic arch was not connected. Doc- tors explained to Jesse that the only reason Asher was still alive was because his fetal functions were still acting as a sort of bypass that allowed Asher's blood to pump without his heart working properly - but since Asher had been out of the womb for nearly two days at that point, those fetal functions were quickly begin- ning to fail. "That's why even in the hospital in Stratford, he slept pretty much the whole time and he didn't wake up very easily," Lisa explained. Asher was then given a medicine that would help to keep his fetal functions working, after which he was transferred to Sick Kids Chil- dren's Hospital in Toronto. At that point, Jesse was told that Asher also had an Atrial Septal Defect - a hole in his heart - and that his aortic valve was narrow - all of which needed to be repaired immediately, with the aortic arch taking precedence. "At four days old he was rushed into his first open-heart surgery and they were able to repair the arch suc- cessfully. They closed the ASD hole and they tried to kind of dilate his aortic valve so it wouldn't be so nar- row," Lisa said. "And that's when I was able to meet them in Toronto, was when he was in surgery:' Five hours after Asher came out of surgery, he suffered a cardiac arrest - which resulted in the ASD repair blowing open. Luckily, the surgeons were in the middle of doing their rounds in the critical care ward and they were able to turn Asher's room into an operating theatre where they re -opened his chest and left it open for three weeks to allow Asher's heart time and space to heal. Once they opened Asher up again, the surgeons realized that their attempt to dilate Asher's aortic valve had not been very successful. "Actually, it's very unusual," Lisa said, explaining that Asher was liter- ally suspended from the incubator lights and had strings stitched into his sternum to give the chest cavity and everything inside room to heal. "If you move the gauze, you see his heart," she said. While Asher was recovering he developed a cardiac arrhythmia, causing his heart to go up to 240 beats per minute on a number of occasions, at which time doctors would have to shock his heart to get it to beat normally again. Lisa said that it took three -and -a -half months for doctors to get that arrhythmia under control with medicine - medicine which Asher still takes today to keep his heart from beating that quickly. At three months old, Asher was sent back to London General Hospi- tal to recover. Before he left Toronto, however, doctors confirmed their initial concerns and diagnosed him with CHARGE Syndrome, a genetic, non -hereditary syndrome which was responsible for, among other health issues such as Asher's hearing loss, his congenital heart defects. "We were told basically to not have expectations for him to even sit up, let alone walk or run," she said. At three -and -a -half months old, Asher was discharged from the London hospital, but on New Years Eve, one of many follow-up heart echos performed in London con- vinced doctors that Asher would need to go back into surgery so sur- geons could address the narrow aortic valve. At four months old, Asher was sent back to Sick Kids to have a catheter lab procedure to try guifiumi,ujidas iJijj(s] ii] 11 Wednesday, February 17, 2016 • Huron Expositor 7 Submitted At four days old, Asher Britton had to undergo emergency open heart surgery in an attempt to remedy a congenital heart disease. At five years old, he is as healthy as any other boy his age and his doctors say it's almost as if he hadn't had to undergo a valve replacement at five months old. "He's cleared to do pretty much anything he wants and he went on his first roller coaster at Wonderland this summer" and balloon dilate his aortic valve, which was not successful. Lisa and Jesse were then told Asher would need an aortic valve replacement - something doctors hoped Asher could wait years for to prevent the need for further surger- ies to replace the new valve with bigger ones as his heart grew. Con- trary to his doctors' wishes, Asher needed the valve replacement right away, so at five months old sur- geons reopened Asher's chest. After eight hours under the knife, Asher came out of the operating theatre and surgeons told Jesse and Lisa they were happy with the way the surgery had gone. That night, just after Lisa and Jesse had left to - Lisa Britton, Asher's mom go to Ronald McDonald House for the night, they received a call from the hospital informing them that Asher had suffered another cardiac arrest. In time, his heart and lungs began to heal on their own. Although Asher had started to look better, his doctors still weren't con- vinced that he would survive much longer. According to Lisa, the nurse practitioner warned her and Jesse that there was a chance that Asher could die overnight while at home. Regard- less of the medical staff's concerns, Asher was sent home on eight differ- ent medications and every day he got healthier and healthier. 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