The Blue Girl

The tetralogy of Fallot is a set of four defects of the heart (and its blood vessels) that affect normal blood flow from birth. It occurs when the baby's heart does not form properly as it grows and develops in the womb during pregnancy. From infancy it can be identified by several characteristics:

• Shortness of breath

• Loss of consciousness

• Easy tiredness during physical exercise

• Irritability

• Heart murmur

• Bluish coloration of the skin, caused by a low level of oxygen in the blood.

And I know them all first hand... My name is Maria Alejandra, and I was born with Tetralogy of Fallot. This is my story. Here is the set of miracles that God has done to keep me alive.

I was born in a small town called Libertad, in the south of Barinas state, Venezuela. I grew up in a nearby town, Dolores de Barinas. Due to the low resources my mother had, she could not get to the nearest medical center. The world welcomed me at the home of a friend of my mother's who was a midwife. When my mother gave birth to me, she noticed that I was born without strength, as if exhausted by the process.

At 13 months of age, I took my first steps and instantly fainted. My mother rushed to the doctor to determine the reason for my fainting. Soon after, they discovered a murmur in my heart. Heart murmurs are sounds, like a whooshing, produced by turbulent blood in or near the heart. The doctor was able to quickly listen to these sounds with his stethoscope.

I spent my childhood relatively normal, can I call it normal not being able to do any physical exercise, not running or playing like other children? Every time I forced my body to the same energy level as the rest of my peers, my fingers would turn blue, then my hands, and then I would fade away. That's how I became known as The Blue Girl.

Solving my problem was not easy. Due to my father's political connections, we were able to travel to Caracas, the capital city, in search of treatment. The solution the doctors proposed was surgery. I felt grateful to God because my problem had a solution. And I did not understand my mother's face of concern and anguish when she heard the phrase "open-heart surgery".

Everything was ready for me to go to the operating room the next day. We left the hotel where we were staying and arrived first thing in the morning at the children's cardiology center in Caracas. They made us wait for a while... a long time actually. After several hours with no response, the doctor informed us that unfortunately the equipment used to perform the surgery had failed the day before, and we had to reschedule the day. My mother was distraught, but I thanked God for that fact... I just thought with horror: what if the so-called machine had failed in the middle of my surgery? I would not have had the opportunity to grow.

The next day we received a call from the doctor saying two things that changed our plans completely. The first: they still had no definite date to repair the failure of the surgical device. Second, the doctor recommended us to travel to the city of Merida in western Venezuela (and closer to our town), where there were excellent children's cardiologists, and above all a machine that worked.

Weeks later we were in the beautiful city of Merida, located in the Andean zone of Venezuela. The doctors were fascinated with my case. I can even say that I was for a while the most famous girl in the Andes University Hospital. All the staff, doctors, nurses, and interns were interested in my case. My parents and I were there for months before the big day of surgery. Dr. Arriaga, who was the doctor in charge of the surgery, had doubts about whether to perform it or not, due to the sensitivity of the case. I remember that the day before arriving at the operating room I looked him in the eyes and said: "Doctor, don't worry, I am not afraid, I am not going to die, I am going to live to tell my story". I could see a flash of light in his eyes as if the fear or worry he had vanished.

For those who don't know, the human heart has two ventricles. One of the four defects in my heart is the existence of a hole in the wall between the two ventricles. This condition is also called ventricular septal defect. This caused the blood in my heart not to oxygenate properly.

The operation lasted more than 10 hours. They took my heart out, hooked me up to machines, and began the process of repairing the heart muscle. The doctors implanted a patch in the ventricular septal defect. They repaired all the other defects they found (and they found more than initially thought) and reimplanted my repaired heart back into my body.

The surgery was a success. I thanked God for a new breath, a new day, a new opportunity. I was no longer the little blue girl. But if you think this story ends here, I'm sorry to tell you that I'm just getting started.

I went into cardiac arrest 18 hours after surgery. But, I will tell you the details in the next article...

Author's Notes: This article is a true story, based on the life experiences of my wife, Maria Alejandra.

Next Chapter: Between Light and Darkness

N0019.2021-11-14.

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