I remember going in to find out if he was a boy or a girl and she's taking her time
and she started having this funny look on her face and it made me very nervous.
I was like, what's wrong?
And she left the room.
She wouldn't say what was going on and she comes back in with the doctor and they look
at it and they were like, well, looks like maybe there's a calcium deposit or something
abnormal to the heart.
Nathan was born with a congenital heart defect.
One out of a hundred kids is born with a heart defect.
But Nathan's was that one out of a million that was extremely complicated, life-threatening.
In most places in the world, Nathan would have been put in a corner of the nursery and
allowed to die.
I was 16 weeks along, so they were like, you need to decide if you're keeping this pregnancy
or not.
Time is of the essence and I remember I didn't have a second thought that I wanted to try
and have this baby as long as somebody had faith that he would be okay, that they could
help him.
We met with our local cardiologist and she actually mentioned Dr. Burke.
She said, you know, this is a doctor that's close in Miami that he's a miracle worker.
And then we made our appointment with Dr. Burke and he must have just come from surgery
when we went in for our appointment with him.
He walks in so casual, picks up this 3D diagram of a heart that's on his coffee table there
and he starts picking it apart.
He's like, your baby doesn't have this piece, this piece, this piece, and what's left is
this way.
And I was like, huh?
And he's like, with just such confidence, he goes, I can fix them.
Nathan's parents brought him to the hospital and trusted us to try and rebuild his heart.
So Nathan has undergone over 10 major cardiac procedures and we've opened his chest four
times to rebuild his heart.
So he's been through more than most people can imagine.
In total, if you count all of his catheterizations that he's had, patches put in through catheters,
we've had stents done through them.
Everything in total is 20.
We just had our 20th surgery this summer.
We don't treat him any differently.
We always try to treat him as if he's a normal eight-year-old and give him a normal life.
Kids like Nathan just didn't survive in the past.
So now that he is alive, we have a journey together to keep him that way, to keep him
healthy.
So our goal is to discover the therapies that are going to help him live a full and happy
life.
We're really responsible for them for their entire lives.
I would rather drive him being sick all the way down to Miami Children's than go to our
local hospital for anything.
Nothing from that not knowing if he would be born alive to him being a completely normal
eight-year-old that runs around has an eight-year-old attitude and they've saved his life.
They have saved my family.
They have given me such an amazing second family here.
This hospital has just been amazing.
