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Timothy Dakota Hollon was born on October 8, 1999 with a congenital heart defect known as Total Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Return (connection) . What this meant for him was his pulmonary veins connected to the right side of his heart instead of his left.
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The pulmonary veins moved oxygenated blood from the lungs back to the heart so that it can be redistributed through out the body. However with Timothy, the oxygenated blood was mixing with the unoxygenated blood causing his body to not receive enough oxygen.
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For him to survive his heart formed a hole between the ventricles, while he was in the womb. This provided his body a way of surviving.
It is common for babies to be born with a slight heart murmur. On October 9, 1999, the pediatrician heard a heart murmur in Timothy and decided to see if it was worse the next day. Timothy was still in my room with me and as far as we knew he was perfectly healthy. He weighed 7lbs 15oz and was 19 3/4 inches long at birth and didn't look sick at all. His feeding and diapers were good, very alert and not very fussy at all. So at this point we were totally clueless that anything was wrong with him.
On October 10th we were planning on going home. We had spent the morning getting things ready for his big arrival. The nurse came in and told me that they were getting my papers ready for my release but Timothy's weren't ready yet because had heard a heart murmur and wanted a cardiologist to take a look just to be safe before releasing him. This took hours because the cardiologist was with another patient. Finally they took Timothy back to the nursery to run some tests. Then after what seemed like hours the cardiologist and pediatrician came in together and we knew right then that something was wrong. They informed us of Timothy's condition. They told us that his veins went to the wrong side of his heart and that caused the right side of his heart to be a little swollen. This had to be fixed soon and that the only way to correct it was via surgery. He was then taken from the nursery up to the NICU and stayed the night awaiting transport to the nearest hospital that was equipped to handle his kind of surgery. After they got him situated in the NICU, we were able to go back and see him. It was the worst sight you could ever imagine. They had him under a plastic dome giving him oxygen, and there were so many monitors. It was very overwhelming for us cause just the day before we thought we had a healthy son. We had to go home that night because there was no were for us to stay. Luckily, though we live really close to the hospital. We were told before we left that Timothy more than likely wouldn't be transported until the afternoon. If something happened that he would need to be transported sooner, they would call us immediately.
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The next morning, we were up bright and early getting stuff ready for our trip to Louisville. Then we were going to pack all our stuff in our car and go spend time with Timothy before they transported him. About 9:15 that morning, just as we were getting ready to leave to go see him the hospital called. I was scared to death! They told us there was nothing wrong but they decided to go ahead and transport him and that they were getting ready to leave with him. So we got all our stuff together and headed up to Louisville. It is about an hour and a half drive for us which wasn't too bad. |
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| We arrived at Kosairs Children's Hospital about 11 am and immediately went to the NICU unit to see if our son had arrived yet. They told us that his transport had been moved back because another call came in that was more urgent. So Kosairs decided to dispatch their transport team to go get him. That meant another 3 hrs minimum before we could see him. We waited until about 2 pm and asked again if he had arrived. Still no Timothy. We were all getting really anxious to see him. |
We wanted him in the same place as us just incase something happened to him. Well about 3 pm they called us over and told us that he was finally here. We couldn't see him right away cause they had to get him settled in. After about 15 minutes they let us go back and just take a peek at him so that we would know that he was doing ok. It took about another 1 1/2 hrs before we could actually stand next to him and touch him. We weren't allowed to hold him because we had to keep him as calm as possible. It got to the point that we could only whisper to him and touch him very little because he got so excited when we were around him. When he got excited it caused his oxygen saturation level in his blood to drop.
The next day (Tuesday) he was scheduled to have a heart catheritization done. This is a pretty basic procedure but still runs risks. This would be the first time Timothy would be put un anesthesia, and because he was being put to sleep, they had to put him on a ventilator just incase. The heart cath took about 2 1/2 hrs. Luckily, the nurse in the cath lab called us in the waiting room every thirty minutes to update us. We were really thankful for that! Timothy did great through the heart cath. We got to walk with him back to the NICU. It took overnight to get him off the ventilator. Timothy's first open heart surgery was scheduled for Thursday Oct.14th.
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