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Sunday, June 4, 2006
Little soldiers with brave hearts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This week, I’m camping with some soldiers.
Half-pint soldiers. About 125 boys and girls from Gwinnett and across Georgia. Maybe a few out-of-staters, too. They’re 7- to-18-year-olds with at least one thing in common. They all have, or have had, bad hearts.
Like my son.
Miles is a miracle child. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, though, especially if he’s fully dressed (more on that later). He entered the world on a November morning, 10 years ago, at 7:08 a.m. in a Florida hospital.
The next day, a pediatrician was making rounds in the nursery, checking up on the babies she helped bring into the world. She’d had no hand in delivering Miles. Something, premonition perhaps, told her to take a look. His lips and face were blue.
And Miles, whose name means “soldier” in Latin, was dying.
Later, we learned he’d been born with a condition called transposition of the great vessels. His aorta and pulmonary artery were reversed. Their placement prevented his blood and oxygen from mixing. The arteries had to be snipped, then reattached to his heart. All on a days-old infant.
His heart was the size of a walnut. His arteries were microscopic. Before the major surgery there were two other surgeries. One pinpointed the congenital birth defect. The other mapped out corrective measures.
Colleagues and friends sometimes ask how I’m able to stay glued under stress and duress. They find it odd that much of what life hands me — the good and the bad — just rolls off my shoulders.
“How could that be?” they ask.
Well, the birth of Miles is why.
I’d be writing a different column today if it weren’t for an attentive pediatrician, and doctors who gave their A-game. It’s not that nothing else matters. Things do. It’s just hard to get worked up over professional and personal drama when you’ve nearly lost a child.
Camp Braveheart is a free, weeklong retreat for cardiac patients. It’s held annually at Camp Twin Lakes, a 300-acre refuge in Rutledge that’s designed specifically for special-needs kids. Physicians and nurses from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta staff the camp with the help of volunteers.
This marks the third year that Miles will attend as a camper and that I’ve served as a boys’ counselor. We’ll be in different cabins. He doesn’t want me around him 24/7.
But I’ll see him coming and going with the other soldiers— riding horses, kayaking, swimming, fishing and eating —everything but dancing at the end-of-camp party.
Miles has a surgical scar that pretty much extends from his chest to his abdomen. There’s also tissue build-up where post-surgical drainage tubes were inserted in the sides of his stomach. It’s hard to ignore these battle scars. They can lead to questions and comments and stares that no kid should have to endure.
At Camp Braveheart, all that vanishes. Every soldier wears some badge of honor. Maybe it’s a surgical scar. Or medication that must be taken at every meal. Or a pacemaker. It might even be a donated heart.
Nobody stands out. What a wonderful place to immerse yourself for a week.
So I’m checking out of Gwinnett and into Braveheart. I’m lugging my laptop along so look for my columns about camp life on Tuesday and Thursday. They might make you think about your life, make you celebrate the good and try to truly resolve the bad.
Who knows. Maybe you’ll learn to be a little more soldierly.
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