Local 3-year-old born with half a heart
By Barbara Gartman
Monitor Staff Writer
GUN BARREL CITY–Pregnancy is a happy time of anticipation, planning and excitement for an expectant mom.
When she was in her fifth month of pregnancy, all of that was dramatically interrupted for Christy Massengale.
During a regular check-up, the sonogram of her baby caught the attention of the technicians, then her doctor.
“The doctor told me he was sending me to a specialist,” Massengale said.
After visiting with the specialist and then a cardiologist, she got what had to be the worst news of her life.
“I was told the baby’s heart was not developing,” she said.
The news was devastating and heartbreaking.
“I was like a child throwing a temper tantrum. I blamed God and I bargained with God,” Massengale said.
The baby was diagnosed with hypoplastic-left heart (HLHS). In other words, her baby was missing the left side of her tiny heart, one of the most serious forms of congenital heart disease.
That was nearly three years ago. Little Eleanore turns three Sunday, Feb. 13, Massengale said.
During her short life she has had five surgeries, two of them open-heart surgeries with a third planned for this coming April.
“They are all very complicated. With only one side of her heart, her blood, both blue and red blood flows through a single section,” she explained.
The surgeries are creating a way for the one section she has, to perform as two sides, carrying the oxygen rich-blood as well as the oxygen poor-blood, but through separate ventricles.
In addition to the surgeries, little Eleanore spends a lot of time in the hospital.
“We’re in Dallas a lot (at the hospitals. Even if she just gets a cold, she is in danger,” Massengale said.
One out of every 100 children are born with some type of heart defect (CHD), she explained.
“Until mine, I never knew children had heart problems,” she said.
The American Heart Association says the cause of HLHS is not known and occurs in 1 to 3 babies in every 10,000 births.
Though the defect is not correctable, some babies can be treated with a series of operations or by a heart transplant.
The first operation is performed soon after birth, the second between four and 12 months of age and the third operation between 18 months and three years old.
Virtually all children with HLHS will need heart medications, heart catheterization and additional surgery.
Children with HLHS are advised to limit their physical activities to their own endurance levels and require lifelong follow-up by a cardiologist.
Christy and husband Ryan take it a day at a time. Eleanore’s condition prevents her from enrolling in a day care, due to her weakened immune system, a symptom of her condition.
Her parents keep portable oxygen tanks at home for immediate use if a monitor indicates her oxygen saturation levels drop severely.
Without medical intervention, 95 percent of these babies die within the first month, especially if it goes undetected during pregnancy and birth.
According to Medical City Children’s Hospital in Dallas, specializing in CHD, more children die from congenital heart defects than from all childhood cancers combined.