YOUNG HEART PATIENT ABLE TO LEAD NEAR-NORMAL LIFE

Congenital defect corrected when 11-year-old was an infant.

MEGAN WHITE, 12; KELLY ELLIOTT, 14; LAURA WILLIAMS, 12

When a baby is born, one of the first things that parents want to do is take pictures and show them to relatives and friends. In Jack Hope's case, that decision was not so simple.

Jack was born with "transposition of the great arteries," which means that his blood paths were backward, and they had to be surgically rerouted.

"I remember not wanting to have Jack's picture taken and then wanting to have the picture taken and went back and forth because you never knew whether he was going to be around after surgery," his mother said.

This disorder occurs when the aorta (the tube leading to the body from the heart) and the pulmonary artery (the tube leading to the lungs from the heart) are switched.

This causes a person to turn blue because the body is not receiving blood that contains enough oxygen. The veins visible in a person's arm contain blood traveling back to the heart and lungs to get oxygen.

Jack is now 11, and even though he has to be careful not to overstress his heart, he's just as rambunctious as any of his classmates, if not more.

"He's in a group," said Megan White, one of his classmates. "See, we have a group of clowns, Tom, Chris and Jack. Just go around together. You can't even remember that he had open heart."

Although Jack has no memory of his heart operations, he's done some serious thinking about his situation.

"It's like one second I could die, and then like three hours later I'm fine," Jack said.

Jack's mom, Susie Hope, remembers how stressful it can be to have a newborn who might die.

"My first thought was that they had made a mistake, you know, when he was born. And I thought, `No, it won't be that way, it was just a mistake.' And then Riley came and got him. We felt real confident with Riley Hospital; we thought they would work it out."

"Yeah, but during my surgery you smoked about 40 packs of cigarettes, and my dad ate all the Twinkies in the whole hospital," Jack added.

As it turns out, Susie Hope's feelings were correct, and Jack was very lucky.

Jack doesn't consider himself handicapped. But when it comes to athletics, especially running, Jack has to take it easy. During his operation, the sac, or bag, around his heart that provides protection was removed.

This limitation doesn't seem to bother Jack. He takes his condition in stride and considers it all in the past, except for his yearly check-ups.

"It's just like going and getting X-rays, and Dr. Girod looks at them and tells me what's going to happen and that stuff. . . . He just looks at them and then starts talking about sports or something."

Donald Girod is Jack's physician, a pediatric cardiologist, and he has told the family: "He's doing well so he doesn't need much. All I do is make sure that things are going OK . . . We're really optimistic that he's doing real great. I think to continue to do great all we have to do is check him."

Jack was lucky enough to be born when his condition was treatable. Girod told Children's Express that had Jack been born in the 1950s, he would have had a very slim chance of surviving. That's because before 1954 surgeons did not generally have heart and lung machines available.

"Well, I'll tell you, you get an education if you hang out at Riley Hospital very long," Jack's mom says. "(It) makes you very thankful that his problem could be corrected because you see a lot of sad, sad stories. And it does make you appreciate what you have. I think maybe you take a different attitude after going through something so traumatic. Just appreciate the littler things more."

She is just happy that Jack is around to talk about it. And she added, "I do want to thank Riley Hospital for that."