Catching up with a dragon-slayer

Last summer we introduced you to William St. George Hunter, aka George, a little boy from South Carolina born with a congenital heart defect. Named for the mythical slayer of dragons, George was one of the earliest children to have a Melody valve—a replacement heart valve that can be expanded as a child grows—implanted into his heart to replace his mitral valve (which helps manage the flow of blood out of the heart to the rest of the body).   We checked in with his mother Elisabeth to see how George, now almost three years old, is doing. Here’s what she told us. When last y’all wrote about our little dragon slayer, he had just become the twelfth child to have his heart’s mitral valve replaced with a Melody valve by cardiac surgeon Sitaram M. Emani, MD. Once home, George immediately started gaining weight—something he’d not been able to do in months—and in just a couple months had caught up to where he should be. (It made this mother’s heart happy for him to have “respectable thighs” when I put him in bubble suits.) The biggest difference was in his appetite. Before his Melody valve, mealtime was a nightmare. He had been a vigorous eater as a baby, but as a toddler started rejecting more and more foods. By the time he showed other symptoms of cardiac distress, he was basically surviving on PediaSure, and throwing up much of that. The Melody valve changed all of that immediately. His appetite returned, his color was rosy, ...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: All posts Our patients’ stories Source Type: news