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Mike and Meme Hulsey were looking forward to their fourth baby boy. After routinely visiting her Ob-Gyn, the baby’s ultrasound, at 5 months gestation, showed a fairly common form of congenital heart disease. Mike and Meme were sent directly to Pediatric Cardiology at Wolfson Children’s Hospital where Dr. Stephanie Lacey confirmed the diagnosis.
With close follow up, Dr. Lacey began to realize that this heart defect was not as ordinary. Baby Ben was closing the communication between the two upper chambers of his heart that would allow the oxygenated blood to travel to his brain and other vital organs after he was born. While Ben was in utero, his mother provided the oxygen. After his birth, he would suddenly not be able to circulate oxygenated blood. Ben’s fetal echocardiogram images were sent to several institutions; the feedback was all the same. They were unaware of an infant with this specific defect who had ever survived past a few minutes of life.
Dr. Lacey was not going to accept that fate for Ben. Within weeks, a massive team had been organized. Baby Ben’s delivery was going to make Wolfson Children’s Hospital history. For the first-time ever, a baby was going to be delivered in Wolfson operating room number 7. Ben then would be taken immediately to the cardiac operating room number 8 where a compliment of more than 25 doctors and nurses would be waiting.
On the day of delivery, one minute after birth, Ben’s heart rate slowed so significantly that he required CPR. Within 15 minutes, Ben was placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a machine that would take the blood out of Ben’s body, oxygenate it, and then replace it. Meanwhile, the surgeons prepared Ben for their life-saving operation. They would create a hole between the two top chambers of his heart that would temporarily allow the oxygenated blood to reach Ben’s brain.
After this procedure, Ben spent three more days on ECMO; then at two weeks of life, he had the definitive surgery to fix his heart – transposition of the great arteries.
Ben spent several more weeks in the hospital, but is now home with Mike, MeMe and his three older brothers growing and thriving well. This miraculous delivery and immediate life-saving surgery was a "medical first" at Wolfson and across our region. |
