Constable: Birth defect fixed 72 years later
On the day after Christmas in 1943, George Brandon was born with a potentially life-threatening heart defect that wasn't diagnosed. Last month, after a routine colonoscopy led to tests that found the hole in his heart, the 72-year-old Grayslake man had his heart fixed at Northwestern Memorial Hospital by a cardiology team that included a pediatric cardiologist who generally performs the procedure on newborns.
"I was able to sneak through life. I have to laugh about it," says Brandon, who now has regained the energy required to share a hearty laugh with his wife, Carol. "It's amazing, at 72, a defect found from birth."
Getting a second opinion on Brandon's proclamation of medical amazement proves easy.
"It was pretty remarkable," says Dr. Tim Provias, one of the cardiologists on the Northwestern team. "You don't expect to find this at his age."
Every fetus has a hole in the heart that allows oxygen-rich blood from the mother to bypass the lungs, Provias says. The hole is supposed to close before birth, redirecting the blood into the lungs where the baby's breathing supplies oxygen.
If it doesn't, the newborns sometimes are known as "blue babies," for the coloring caused by oxygen deprivation.
"Blue babies: I think I learned about that in seventh-grade health," Brandon says.
Some babies require surgery right away. Other people can live normal lives with small holes in their hearts. To have the hole cause problems at Brandon's age is "very, very unusual," says Dr. Micah Eimer, another cardiologist on the Northwestern team. "If they are going to cause a problem, it's in the 20s and 30s."
When he was that age, Brandon made his living lifting 50-pound parts in the International Harvester factory in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He had no health problems as a kid growing up in the small Hoosier hamlet of Warren, along the Salamonie River.
"We went fishing every day. We went rafting every day. We did everything every day," Brandon says. "I would have shortness of breath running up and down the basketball court, but it wasn't a big deal. I was not the leader of the pack, but I got around."
He lifted weights and had enough energy to mentor a teenager who needed some guidance.
"He was wayward," remembers Brandon, who says the kid found a great way to repay him. The boy persuaded his student teacher from Huntington College to go on a date with Brandon.
"We got married three months later," says Carol Brandon, who will celebrate her 47th anniversary with her husband in June. She says her husband always seemed fit.
"I don't remember him ever being sick," she says. They have two adult daughters. Megan, 37, a board-certified pharmacist, and Elizabeth, 29, a paralegal, both living in Tucson, Ariz. Their middle daughter, Carla, died at age 4 of spinal meningitis. That heartache has never left.
When the Harvester plant closed, Brandon found work in Illinois and moved here in 1992. In his 60s and semiretired, Brandon lost a step. He had a mini stroke that caused no lasting damage, but he had no energy. He'd get out of breath and have to lean against a tree while walking their dog.
"I thought, 'Wow, so this must be retirement,'" says Brandon, who still does some part-time work as a quality control expert. "I thought I was just getting old."
Overdue for a diagnostic colonoscopy, Brandon went to Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital on Dec. 15. Doctors discovered the oxygen level in his blood was far below normal. A healthy person has an oxygen rate in the mid- to upper-90s, and "he was down to 60 percent," his wife recalls. The colonoscopy was normal, but doctors told Brandon to come back for more tests to determine the cause of his low oxygen levels. He returned to the hospital Jan. 4.
"They took me to the emergency room immediately," Brandon remembers. "The doctors were so worked up about it."
After discovering the problem was caused by a defect generally found and fixed in infants, Drs. Eimer, Provias and Ranya Sweis of Northwestern's Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute brought in Dr. David Wax, an interventional cardiologist from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, who often performs magic tricks to amuse his young patients.
"It was a team effort," Eimer says.
Threading a catheter from Brandon's groin to his heart, doctors watched on imaging equipment as they inserted small fabric devices on each side of the hole.
"They put a real little plug between the two chambers of my heart," Brandon says. That prevented the flow of nonoxygenated blood and restored Brandon's oxygen levels to normal.
"He looked just great afterward," remembers Carol Brandon, who heads the outreach program for Warren-Newport Public Library. "There was no more breathing heavy. As soon as it was done, it was fixed."
The doctors say they love the way Brandon describes the result.
"I was like a one-cylinder lawn mower that would get stuck even looking at high grass," Brandon says. "And now, I feel like a smooth-running V8. Not a sports car, but pretty good.
So, anyway, they nailed it."
As astonished as he is that doctors found and fixed a problem he had as a baby, Brandon says that having his health restored at age 72 comes with all kinds of benefits.
"It's great," Brandon says. "And the nice thing is I don't have to go back for one of those colonoscopies."