every once in a while, lately a great while, a "feel good" story comes around and i think this ranks right up there...
Quote:
A “miracle” 18-day-old baby named Grace is heading home today, nearly three months after Hub doctors performed an unprecedented life-saving procedure on her grape-sized heart while she was nestled in her mother’s womb.
“It truly is a miracle she’s here,” a tearful Angela VanDerwerken said yesterday while cradling her newborn at Children’s Hospital. “She’s definitely a fighter. She’s amazing. She’s amazing Grace.”
When the Ashburn, Va., mother was pregnant with Grace, her fourth child, doctors determined her unborn baby had a congenital heart defect. Her heart’s main pumping chamber wasn’t developing, and she didn’t have a passage between the upper chambers in her heart, a condition that causes blood to back up into her lungs.
Even worse, doctors told Angela and Jay VanDerwerken their unborn baby would have to undergo open-heart surgery immediately after birth and the chances of her surviving were only 20 percent.
But last November, a team of doctors from Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital inserted a fine needle through the pregnant mother’s belly and uterus, placing a tiny stent into the heart of the 30-week-old fetus.
The operating room erupted in cheers when the monitor showed blood flowing through the stent. Grace - the first fetus in the world to get a stent - was born nine weeks later, on Jan. 10. She was a “healthy pink” and had no signs of lung damage.
“She has exceeded all expectations,” said Dr. Emile Bacha, a cardiologist at Children’s Hospital.
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it's truely amazing that a procedure such as this succeeded on such a fragile little thing... my heart a best wishes go out to this kid...
i'm such a sucker for this kinda stuff... her name suits her