Andrew's Story
By Nancy King
Many people who know Andrew have no idea of the challenges he has already overcome. To the outside world, he is just like most other little boys: happy, active, and easily excited by everything and everyone around him. Of course, that is exactly how we want things.
On the inside, Andrew is different. He was born with a Transposition of the Great Arteries (“TGA”), a congenital heart defect where the two major vessels that carry blood away from the heart -- the aorta and the pulmonary artery -- are switched (transposed), each coming off the wrong chamber of the heart. In normal hearts, blood that returns from the body goes from the right side of the heart, through the pulmonary artery to the lungs to get oxygen. The oxygenated blood then comes back to the left side of the heart and travels out the aorta to the body.
In Andrew’s heart, oxygenated blood from the lungs came into the heart, and then was pumped right back to the lungs without ever going to the rest of the body. Unoxgyenated blood was being circulated to the rest of his the body. He was what they refer to as a "blue baby", because as the oxygen-poor blood circulated through his body, his skin would take on a blue tinge, a condition known as cyanosis.
Andrew had surgery when he was only four days old, an amazing procedure in which Dr. Jonathon Chen, a pediatric cardiac surgeon at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York, severed Andrew’s aorta and pulmonary arteries, and then reattached them. The surgery is actually far more complicated than that: dozens of smaller vessels that branch off almost immediately from the aorta also had to be relocated. All of this was done on a heart roughly the size of a walnut, with similarly tiny vessels. As challenging as this procedure sounds, it is a surgery with a relatively high success rate – at least with an experienced surgeon in a hospital like Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital.
Andrew’s surgery was successful, allowing him to enjoy a relatively normal life. He has brought unbelievable amounts of joy to his parents, his sister, and his two older brothers.
We are thankful that Andrew was born in a time when miracles like his are possible. In 2010, we founded Colin’s Kids with the Molloy family to try to help other families and children born with congenital heart defects, both by funding research into congenital heart defects, and by providing financial assistance to parents struggling to get the best possible care for their children. We grew close to the Molloys in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where Andrew and Colin spent their first weeks of life together recovering from their heart surgeries. We think of Colin as Andrew’s first best friend, and we know that Colin is watching out for Andrew from above.
By Nancy King
Many people who know Andrew have no idea of the challenges he has already overcome. To the outside world, he is just like most other little boys: happy, active, and easily excited by everything and everyone around him. Of course, that is exactly how we want things.
On the inside, Andrew is different. He was born with a Transposition of the Great Arteries (“TGA”), a congenital heart defect where the two major vessels that carry blood away from the heart -- the aorta and the pulmonary artery -- are switched (transposed), each coming off the wrong chamber of the heart. In normal hearts, blood that returns from the body goes from the right side of the heart, through the pulmonary artery to the lungs to get oxygen. The oxygenated blood then comes back to the left side of the heart and travels out the aorta to the body.
In Andrew’s heart, oxygenated blood from the lungs came into the heart, and then was pumped right back to the lungs without ever going to the rest of the body. Unoxgyenated blood was being circulated to the rest of his the body. He was what they refer to as a "blue baby", because as the oxygen-poor blood circulated through his body, his skin would take on a blue tinge, a condition known as cyanosis.
Andrew had surgery when he was only four days old, an amazing procedure in which Dr. Jonathon Chen, a pediatric cardiac surgeon at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York, severed Andrew’s aorta and pulmonary arteries, and then reattached them. The surgery is actually far more complicated than that: dozens of smaller vessels that branch off almost immediately from the aorta also had to be relocated. All of this was done on a heart roughly the size of a walnut, with similarly tiny vessels. As challenging as this procedure sounds, it is a surgery with a relatively high success rate – at least with an experienced surgeon in a hospital like Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital.
Andrew’s surgery was successful, allowing him to enjoy a relatively normal life. He has brought unbelievable amounts of joy to his parents, his sister, and his two older brothers.
We are thankful that Andrew was born in a time when miracles like his are possible. In 2010, we founded Colin’s Kids with the Molloy family to try to help other families and children born with congenital heart defects, both by funding research into congenital heart defects, and by providing financial assistance to parents struggling to get the best possible care for their children. We grew close to the Molloys in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where Andrew and Colin spent their first weeks of life together recovering from their heart surgeries. We think of Colin as Andrew’s first best friend, and we know that Colin is watching out for Andrew from above.
