We Meet Some Amazing People At The House!

We kept a really big secret for a long time and when it came out it hit big.  Like “international” big.

The surgery to separate Maria and Teresa was huge from a couple of standpoints:

• It was only a few years ago that this type of surgery was considered so risky that many doctors and parents opposed it.  A huge team of doctors and specialists was required to pull it off.  They used some amazing technology to perform the surgery.  It was a first for VCU.

We were proud to have played a part in this story, but we see this sort of thing all the time.

One of our recent guests was with us while waiting for a heart transplant.  That in itself is pretty cool.  The heart is a pretty important and complicated organ and it’s amazing to us that they can take yours out and plug a new one in.  But it gets crazier.

At some point a diseased or weakened heart is going to want to throw in the towel.  When that happens they hook you up to a “bypass” machine that pumps for you.  The nickname around some parts for the machine is “Big Blue” because it’s huge and it weighs a ton.  You could move around with it, but only as far as you could push it.  It was like taking a stroll with a Volkswagen chained to your chest.

Artificial hearts have been around for a while, but they’re still a bridge to a transplant.  A new technology is rising, though, that will let folks get rid of Big Blue and get some quality of life while awaiting a transplant.

This guest had something called a Freedom Driver.  It was still cabled and tubed to her chest, but she could carry it.  In a backpack.  She was at the House for a while waiting for a donor heart, but one day she got bored and went to visit some friends.  In Waynesboro.  That’s about a hundred miles west of here.

Oh, and she went fly-fishing.

(Can’t help but share this tidbit:  Do you know who has the first patent for a mechanical artificial heart?  Paul Winchell.  You probably don’t know his name but you probably know his voice.  He was better known as a ventriloquist and was the voice of Tigger in the original Winnie the Pooh movies.  Who knew?)

Some of our guests aren’t amazing because of a groundbreaking procedure or because of an innovative technology.  Some are just amazing because of who they are and what they’ve been through.

Just last week, we said goodbye to a lovely little girl and her mother.  Doctors at VCU had worked to reconstruct the little girl’s leg.  Every week or so we’d see them in the kitchen or playing games and notice a different colored cast.  “New cast!  Maybe this will be the last one?”

After 7 months, we saw the last cast and helped them to pack up.  They were going to be home for Christmas.  And they were going much farther than Waynesboro.  Their home was in Belize.  That’s in Central America.

We hope that by Christmas Day she’ll be bounding like Tigger.  Perhaps she’ll be able to come back and visit?  Until then, Ta Ta For Now!