Dec 17, 2007 4:22 pm US/Eastern
WBZ 4 Kids: Avery's Life-Saving Heart Surgeries
by Lisa Hughes
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
The doctors and nurses at Children's Hospital Boston pull off miracles everyday and this is the story of one little girl and the heart surgeries that saved her life.
It's surgery she could get only at Children's.
This is a story that affects us right here at WBZ 4 because little Avery Toole's dad is one of our co-workers.
Two-and-a-half-year-old Avery was born with one of the most serious heart defects a child can have - Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome.
"I'll never forget that image of coming back to the hospital that morning," said Avery's dad Mike, a cbs4boston.com web producer.
"Seeing her in the ICU thinking... I'm never going to get a chance to know her... I'm never going get a chance to meet her."
Avery's mother Cheryl works at Children's Hospital, as the nurse manager in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
But that didn't make it any easier hearing the diagnosis.
"It was by far the worst moment of my life" she said.
Avery's cardiac surgeon showed us the ultra sound that recorded her heart when she was one day old.
"What it's showing us is that the left side of the heart is smaller, much smaller than the right side," said Dr. Pedro del Nido, the chief of cardiac surgery at Children's.
He performed the delicate open heart surgery on Avery when she was five days old.
"Without that surgery, she wouldn't have survived" he said.
Avery has had three surgeries to reconfigure her heart so the right side does all the work, something it's not designed to do. But thanks to experimental surgery pioneered at Children's, doctors are also hopeful they can help restore the left side.
"In Avery's case," del Nido said, "she has a real chance, a real possibility that we may be able to get that left side to actually grow and catch up."
I asked Mike, when he looks at Avery now, what does he see for her future?
"Nothing but hope. I can't tell you how lucky we are to have this in our back yard. Just from being here I found out that people come from around the world and stay here for months at a time to care for their children. Fortunately, we live only 40 minutes away."
"She really signifies what Children's is about," Cheryl added. "The hope and the miracles and the gifts, really, that go on here every day."
You look at her and you would never know that she's a two-and-a-half year old who had open heart surgery.
"No, absolutely not" said Cheryl.
Families come to Children's from all over the world to have this surgery.
If you'd like to support Children's Hospital Boston through the WBZ 4 Kids campaign, you can
donate to Children's Hospital online.
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