Wednesday, June 19, 2013
By Leslie Bridgers lbridgers@pressherald.com
Staff Writer
Jose Marroquin Galan couldn't get to the top of the ferry in Portland fast enough.
Rina Galan holds her 12-year-old son, Jose Marroquin Galan, while waiting for his chest to be X-rayed at Maine Medical Center in Portland, the day before his heart surgery on Sept. 21. They traveled from El Salvador so Jose could have his life-threatening heart defect corrected.
Photos by Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer
Jose listens as his mother and anesthesiologist Dan Landry talk before the surgery. Gift of Life International, a Rotary-affiliated program, arranged for Jose to have the operation for free.
JOSE’S HEART AILMENT
AT A GLANCE
A ventricular septal defect, also known as a hole in the heart, occurs when a fetus’ ventricles do not completely separate, leaving one or more holes in the wall between them.
Of every 1,000 babies, eight are born with a heart defect, and about a third of them are ventricular septal defects, according to kidshealth.org.
A hole in the septum can close – and about 40 percent of them do – but those that don’t may cause too much blood to be pumped to the lungs, which can result in heart failure.
To fix Jose’s heart, Dr. Reed Quinn first had to saw through his sternum, said his nurse, Lori Hafner.
A heart-lung machine performed the function of those organs for five hours, while Jose’s heart was stopped.
Quinn sewed the hole in Jose’s septum shut. He implanted a mechanical valve to take the place of the valve that had been damaged as a result of Jose’s heart defect.
He also repaired a Sinus of Valsalva aneurysm, a weakness in the junction between the aorta and the heart.
Without the operation, it’s possible that Jose could have lived into his 30s or 40s, but he would have started to have difficulty breathing, had little energy and become cyanotic, meaning his skin would take on a bluish color, said Nicole Mizner, a nurse practitioner who works with Quinn.
She was surprised he hadn’t already had those symptoms.
– Leslie Bridgers
Wearing a black puffy coat and a smile so wide the space behind his molars showed, he grabbed the railings as far up as his 12-year-old arms could reach and launched himself up each stair.
Jose didn't look like a boy who was half a day away from having his chest cut open and his heart sewn up in an operation that would, at once, threaten and save his life.
He did look like a boy who had never been on a boat before.
A few days earlier, he and his mother, Rina Galan, had taken their first plane ride.
"Primero y ultimo," Galan said with a nervous laugh. First and last.
In her 40 years, Galan had never left El Salvador. If her only child hadn't been born with a life-threatening heart defect that surgeons there didn't have the training to fix, she never would have left.
Jose was different; he wanted to travel. His father, whom he sees on weekends when they play ping-pong and go to Pizza Hut, has a friend who lives in Utah. Jose wants to visit her and his aunt in Toronto.
He liked it in America, from what he could tell by staying at the Ronald McDonald House on Brackett Street. The food was good, the showers were warm and his clothes smelled nice when they came out of the laundry machine, something no one they know has in El Salvador.
But, mostly, he was happy to be there because he would have the operation and, after that, he wouldn't have to worry anymore.
Jose was 3 months old when, during a routine checkup, a doctor heard what sounded like a whisper when his heart beat. That revealed he was born with a ventricular septal defect -- a hole in the wall between the lower chambers of his heart. Without repair, it would eventually cause heart failure.
Outwardly, he has never shown signs of the condition. Still, his mother made sure he knew, if he was ever playing soccer or riding his bicycle and something felt wrong, he had to stop. He also knew that, as he got older, it would get worse.
Galan submitted his medical records in December to Gift of Life International, a Rotary-affiliated program that connects children with congenital heart defects to hospitals that will fix them for free.
Between her job working the teleprompter at a TV station in San Salvador and her ex-husband's salary as an accountant, they had no way of paying for the operation themselves.
Galan thought it would be years before they heard back from Gift of Life. But, in March, she was told to get passports for her and Jose. Three months later, a surgery date was set for September. Talking about it, Galan could cry. She remembers being happy that Jose would have the operation, but sad to have to leave her family and scared to go alone.
Galan and Jose flew out of San Salvador on the morning of Sept. 15 and arrived in the Dallas airport at midday. Once Galan found the gate for their flight to Boston, she sat down in a chair and didn't move until the plane boarded three hours later.
Galan knew she was meeting a man in Boston, but didn't know what he looked like. After landing at Logan International Airport, she walked around holding an envelope from Gift of Life so he would recognize her.
Paul Emery, a bear of a man with a trim white beard, had seen pictures of the mother and son on copies of their passports. When he spotted them, he opened his arms.
(Continued on page 2)
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Jose Marroquin Galan and his mother, Rina, take their first boat ride ever on a Casco Bay Lines ferry bound from Portland to Peaks Island the day before Jose’s surgery. |
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Jose winces as phlebotomist Caramie Frazier inserts a needle to draw blood at Maine Medical Center. |
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Jose follows instructions from Kimberly Chesterfield, a senior radiographer at the hospital, for an X-ray in preparation for his heart surgery the following day. |
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Dr. Reed Quinn, Maine’s only pediatric heart surgeon, talks to Jose in a pre-op room before the surgery, in which Quinn fixed a heart defect, and also implanted a mechanical valve and repaired an aneurysm. Quinn has a reputation for operating on foreign children in need. |
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Jose rests in his room in the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at Maine Medical Center five days after his surgery, when it was still hard for him to breathe and walk. |
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Jose leaves the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital on Thursday with help from nursing student Tomas Harriman. |
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Jose talks on the phone with a family friend on Wednesday while recuperating at the hospital. |
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