At age 8, Scharnese Cook was very active. She ran track at school and was involved in various activities. In May 2015, she began to have trouble breathing. At first, it appeared to be a severe asthma attack. The situation became critical when emergency medical personnel found that her pulse was much too rapid. A…
I’ve been proud to call Norton Healthcare my employer for 36 years. While I work in human resources now, I got my start as a staff nurse at Norton Children’s Hospital. I met so many special kids and families as a nurse. There are too many to count, but there is one I still think…
He had struggled from the beginning. Dale Howser, now 11, was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a serious defect that prevents the left side of the heart from developing or functioning properly. HLHS is a complicated diagnosis that often requires multiple surgeries, multiple medications and, in Dale’s case, a pacemaker. Like many of…
Late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel used his opening monologue Monday night to give an emotional account of how his newborn son was diagnosed with tetralogy of Fallot. Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) is a congenital heart condition marked by four defects: a hole in the heart; the aorta lying over the hole; an obstruction from the heart to…
Shortly after he was born, Evan Karr was diagnosed with tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect that occurs in around five of every 10,000 babies born. It’s one of the most common heart defects and is actually four defects in one, involving a hole between the chambers of the heart, a narrowing of the…
In 1986, Robbie Cardin became Norton Children’s and Kentucky’s first pediatric heart transplant patient. As you can imagine, his plight was covered by the media. Robbie was referred to as “Baby Calvin” to protect his family’s privacy. Robbie was born by cesarean section at Hardin Memorial Hospital in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Doctors knew right away something…
At just 13 years old, Mekinley Elrod has already traveled down a long medical road. Her journey began when she was 3 days old. Diagnosed with panhypopituitarism (no pituitary gland), she spent 2½ months at Norton Children’s Hospital, where she endured numerous surgeries, including heart surgery to repair a valve. She still spends a lot of time…
Bess is the only child of Todd and Lee Margaret Johnson born without a heart condition. Todd and Lee have more nights and days than they can count at Norton Children’s Hospital — overnights on top of day trips from their Bardstown home for their children’s chest X-rays, lab work, outpatient cardiac catheterizations, surgeries and more….
The year was 1972, but Joanie Strotman still remembers her first patient like it was yesterday. The little boy in her care was seizing and fading fast. The boy’s father became overwhelmed and passed out. Half his size, Strotman managed to catch the dad before he hit the floor. “What on earth have I gotten…
Dynamic and vivacious, 11-year-old twin sisters Lauren and Madison are every bit as charming as they are spirited. However, while the girls are matched in character, they differ in physical development. Older by 30 minutes, Lauren is noticeably taller than Madison, who was born with a congenital heart defect. Halfway through her pregnancy, their mother,…
An approaching birth is normally a joyful event, but for Jodie and James Campbell of Louisville it was fraught with anxiety. In 2013, their unborn child had become severely anemic from a viral infection, parvovirus, Jodie had developed. At 24 weeks of pregnancy, the child’s survival depended entirely on a timely blood transfusion into the…
This story was originally published on April 2, 2015 and has been updated. It had been in high school, over 10 years ago, when I had last seen Angela Roberts. It wasn’t under the greatest circumstances that we reconnected, but she was still the same as I had remembered — a smile from ear to…