HomeMy WebLinkAboutHuron Expositor, 2016-02-17, Page 7Beating the odds: Asher Britton's
battle with congenital heart disease
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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.
CONTINUED > PAGE 8
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