George came into this world a day after his due date. Labor was uneventful and he seemed to be a healthy 7lb.5oz. boy! He was purple in color, and I had a feeling that he was not healthy. The doctors and nurses reassured me that he was fine, but I knew otherwise in my heart.
I now can see that we all had precious time with him those first ten hours of his life. I nursed him, his siblings played with him and all his aunts and uncles, and grandparents came to see him. It wasn't until later that evening when he was returned to the nursery that the nurses knew something was wrong. The doctor rushed into my room, waking me up around midnight telling me something was very wrong with my baby. I had a calm stillness inside, knowing this was true and feeling like it was a bad dream coming true. George was taken to Children's Hospital early that morning. He was diagnosed with TGA. We were told what that was and told we had the option of two surgeries to chose from. We knew nothing of all of this, but over the next few days we learned a lot.
George had a balloon procedure to open the area between his heart. We were told we would wait and see how he responded to see what we were going to do. We agonized over the decision and finally decided (with the cardiologist help), to go with the Senning procedure. This surgery was successful, despite the fact that George had to have a pacemaker implanted at the age of four. He had arrhythmias. Some were caused by the surgery and others he would have had despite the surgery. George has been on and off of various medicines to control his arrhythmia and they have worked.
George's treatments: George first had the balloon catheterization when he was one day old. He had the Senning procedure to correct his defect on April 21, 1987. The doctors actually gave us the choice of that procedure and the arterial switch. The switch was just being perfected at the time, with a 50% survival rate. We chose the Senning with a 90% survival rate. The doctors warned us that the Senning had complications, most commonly rhythm problems. This occurred the day we returned home from the hospital and George was about three weeks old. He had SVT and had to stay in the hospital another three weeks before the meds worked. He went home on Indural and digoxin. At the age of two he was having bradycardia. He had already had a electrophysiology study catheterization at one year, that showed he did not have Wolf Parkinson White (WPW) syndrome, as his cardiologist feared. The pacemaker was implanted when he was four. He did very well with the pacemaker and his meds. When he was about ten, the pacemaker was coming to the end of its battery life. The cardiologist decided he might need a stent to help open the aorta so the new pacemaker lead could be inserted easily. They had to put the original wires through his chest cavity because of this problem. He had a catheterization to insert the stent, but it was determined he did not need it at that time. A year later he did have the stent inserted. He also underwent two ablation procedures to alleviate the SVT. They worked well. Long, intense procedures, both lasting 12 hours, yet they allowed George to be removed from all meds. He finally had his new pacemaker implanted on the outside of his pectoral muscle (as opposed to underneath his muscle as the first one was), in the summer of 1998. He recovered and did not have any problems until last year. He started to have episodes of tachycardia again and he ended up in the ER. His cardiologist decided to put him back on digoxin and Prinivil.
He is now an active fourteen year old boy. He plays baseball now and has enjoyed playing soccer, and basketball all throughout his youth. He is now a teen, and he loves his friends, and music and having fun. He is a great kid, and has the physique of a football player.
