Make a wish

Okay... I NEVER watch the news. nothing ever interesting is going on. especially when I can read things on the internet. Especially never local news. Unless I want to see a skateboarding bulldog or a waterskiing squirrel. Anyway, my roomate was watching something and the news was on after it. And they started talking about the make-a-wish foundation and so on. So I was about to turn the channel... then they mentioned an 9 year old and a name I recognized. It was a generic name and could have been anybody, but there he was, a child I took care of as a cardiac anesthesia fellow.

The reason I remember this kid is that he was truely one in a million. The surgery he was having as an eight year old was a coronary artery bypass. He had a disease called hereditary familial hypercholesterolemia. The problem for this kid was that he had the worst kind. He had cholesterol levels 8 to 10 times what a normal person would have, thus he had premature disease of the arteries feeding his heart. Most patients who have this type of surgery are in their fifties and above.

What killed me was that on the news report they did say he had coronary artery disease, but they said that "Sometimes he doesn't feel well" and left it at that. I guess you can't say "Sometimes his heart doesn't get enough blood" on TV. Well at least he got a new puppy.