It’s nothing more than a muscle, a small part of your makeup which beats in rhythm to sustain life. Yet it holds so much significance, not just in its ability to exist at the core of your body, but at the very center of your being. Its physical importance can’t be denied, but it’s the light which emanates from that core that gives life meaning.

The Sunday Series (24): Heartlight

You could literally see his heart beating. Hayden lay there, his chest wide open, covered only with some light bandages, in critical condition. His parents sitting by his bedside throughout the night, with one single purpose, one single desire, one single prayer… please let Hayden live.

It was only a little more than four years before that moment Hayden Lazorchak was born, prematurely. But at 4-lbs, 12-ounces, he was a seemingly healthy preemie, at least for a day. That’s when doctors in the NICU discovered something was missing – half his heart. Hayden’s issue was never caught in-utero. An ultrasound about halfway through the pregnancy showed all four chambers. But somewhere between that midpoint and his birth about a month earlier than normal, something failed to develop, and within 24 hours of his entry into this world the doctors knew Hayden would embark on a rare journey, one shrouded in a dark cloud of doubt that it could even succeed.

It’s called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. HLHS is a rare congenital heart defect in which the left ventricle of the heart is severely underdeveloped, basically the person has only half a functioning heart. In babies with HLHS, the aorta and left ventricle are underdeveloped before birth, and the aortic and mitral valves are too small to allow sufficient blood flow. For Hayden doctors said his best chance at survival would be three corrective surgeries, the first to begin immediately, the second at six months, the third a few years down the road. That’s the medical game plan. The reality is no one could be sure it would work, but there was little choice.

So having entered the world only hours before, Hayden was about to undergo major open heart surgery. His parents, Ali and Rob were given time with their newborn son, to hold him, to take photos, to be in the moment, because at that moment, the doctors were unsure Hayden would even make it.

But somehow he did.

The first emergency surgery was deemed a success. Though Hayden spent a month in the hospital, he was then allowed to come home.

Ali says the challenge of taking care of a new life, even a “normal” baby, can be overwhelming, but add to that the task of caring for a baby having undergone open heart surgery and the real challenge becomes creating as normal an existence as possible, especially when you know what is looming around the corner, surgery number two.

Ali says the first surgery was a “whirlwind”, an immediate and necessary emergency procedure just to keep Hayden alive. But the second time around, Hayden was already six-months old, “we knew him”, says Ali, “this one was going to be so much harder.”

And it was.

Hayden was supposed to be in the hospital for a week, his stay lasted four months. During that time, and through a myriad of complications, Hayden suffered…including becoming addicted to pain killers. This tiny life, a little more than half-a-year old, was now an addict, forced to be put on methadone to help ween him off the pain drugs which the doctors were forced to give Hayden just to help him exist. He had also been intubated for so long now, Hayden didn’t even know how to eat on his own anymore. Physical and drug rehabilitation now became a part of this tiny baby’s existence.

They say God does not give you more than you can handle. Sometimes that is hard to believe. During the same period, Ali was forced to undergo an emergency open appendectomy, after her appendix ruptured when she and Rob were out one evening. Ali says for her family, especially for Rob, with his son suffering, his wife recovering from her own major surgery, it seemed like the world was teetering on the brink. But Ali recovered and then Hayden, still less than one-year-old, having survived his second surgery and his “rehabilitation”, eventually came home.

Except for the medications Hayden needed to take daily, Ali says life was, “really normal. We did everything normal families do.” They did, but the Lazorchak’s were doing even more. During Hayden’s second surgery stay, Ali and Rob decided they needed to give back and created a non-profit organization called Hayden’s Heart Heroes, with funds raised going directly to the pediatric cardiology division and the PICU at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where Hayden was being treated. Ali says when you are going through something like this there are “two roads to take. Get through it and then try to forget it, or so something about it. For us it was about doing and emotionally that’s where we were able to put our energy, it gave us direction.” (http://www.haydensheartheroes.com/)

For the next few years, the direction for the Lazorchak family was a positive one. Outside of the visits with their cardiologist Dr. Joel Brenner, and the daily medications, Hayden was living and growing just like a normal child. Ali says from the outside it was impossible to tell he had been through so much. That’s what made surgery number three, the final one the doctors told them about shortly after Hayden was born, so tough to take. “It was horrible for us”, says Ali, “unbelievably difficult because he was totally this little person. You already have all these connections. He loved to sing, loved to golf, it was so much different than when he was a baby, at four-years-old, it was so much more real and it was very hard to hand him over that day.”

Hard quickly became an understatement. The prior surgeries had not been easy, this one ended up requiring a heart-lung bypass and the discovery of a tricuspid valve leakage. On the surgery table for ten hours, the doctors would come out to give updates to Ali and Rob, and none of them were positive. The doctors believed by that evening Hayden might need to go on full life support. Coming out of surgery that day Hayden’s chest remained opened because of a build-up of fluid, the doctors pumped him with diuretics for three full days. The rabbi who came to see Hayden nearly fainted when he saw the young boy lying there with his chest open, his heart visibly beating.

But in nothing short of a miracle the doctors were able to stabilize the young boy. They closed him up and after overcoming a few more complications, discussion of a heart transplant which Ali and Rob somehow convinced the doctors would not be needed, and more than a month in the hospital, Hayden finally came home.

Hayden is now 9-years old and slowly over these past five years his heart function has steadily improved, his valve leakage is no longer an issue and doctors say his heart is the best its ever been. Hayden takes a daily dose of the blood thinner Cumadin, which he will do for the rest of his life, but Ali says to him all of this is normal. She and Rob have fought hard to make life normal for Hayden and for them and to continue to give back. Hayden’s Heart Heroes will hold its 9th golf tournament this June and the book fair this fall, and the foundation is about to hit the $100,000 mark in donations.

In the end it’s all about heart. Whether it’s a half, a whole, or something in between. It’s not the heart muscle, but the light which emanates from its core, and touches all those who come in contact. For Ali and Rob it’s the glow of that light, Hayden’s light, now stronger than ever, which makes their own hearts shine ever brighter.

Until next time thanks for taking the time,
Mark

Mark Brodinsky, Author, Blogger
It Takes 2. Surviving Breast Cancer: A Spouse’s Story
#1 Amazon Best-Seller
www.amazon.com/author/markbrodinsky

For feedback or ideas for The Sunday Series, send an e-mail to markbrodinsky@gmail.com

Tomorrow marks two years. April 13th, 2012, a phone call.

Communication is always a good thing, but sometimes a conversation can turn your world on a dime. That cancer call that first creates fear, then if you handle it as adeptly as my wife did, you take action, enact a radical change, kick its ass and move on, or at least as much as you can after surviving the transformation of your physical being, and the never-ending emotional journey of living with the consequences and the new you. Stronger, sometimes stranger, always…survivor.

The following excerpt is the journal entry I wrote that day on the pages of Caringbridge.com, and which is now part of Chapter One in the book, It Takes 2. Surviving Breast Cancer: A Spouse’s Story. It does take two, and it’s hard to believe that tomorrow marks two years since that day.

Cancer-free day is May 10th, the day of the double mastectomy, and from now until that day, the Kindle and Paperback versions of It Takes 2 have been reduced significantly, with all royalties for the next month being donated to Caringbridge.org, where my journal first began and which relies completely on donations to allow others to share their own stories online. Here now the excerpt from, It Takes 2.

Forever Changed
April 13, 2012

I don’t even remember what she said; I just remember where I was.
Friday the 13th, April 2012. This is a day we will never forget. I’m at my car, parked just outside the bank on this beautiful Friday morning. I had just popped the trunk for some reason and was standing outside looking in when the cell phone rang. It was Debbie. And she was sad.

Sad is an understatement. I could hear it through her tears, a garbled, quick explanation that the radiologist had called, and it wasn’t benign, it was malignant, or maybe she used the word cancer. I honestly don’t remember. All I knew was Debbie was at work, and I was miles away. I couldn’t get to her at that moment. I couldn’t hold her, all I could do was listen to her fear and pain through the phone and through those tears. I felt like I was standing in quicksand. I hopped back in the car, because it was windy and I couldn’t hear all of what Debbie was saying. She said the radiologist called her at work and said he wanted to talk to her … then he asked if she was sitting down! She knew then it was not going to be a great moment. He said the pathology report showed a malignancy inside her nipple duct, cancer in-situ, but the concern was the invasive tumor outside the duct, that was a bigger issue. Then I heard the phone cut out.

It was Debbie’s call-waiting. Someone was calling in, either her mom, or her sister, or a good friend. I don’t know, I don’t remember, but Debbie wanted to take the call. She said she would call me right back. Sure, just like any other day. Except today wasn’t like any other day, neither will be the days to come, I’m sure. Life has done what life does—throws down the gauntlet and then look you straight in the eye and ask, “Okay, what are you going to do now?”
I’ll tell you what I was going to do—I was going to get to Debbie. So I started driving. Where was I going? I wasn’t sure. Deb was a good 30 miles away at work, and was she staying, or going? Was I going home? What about my two daughters? What about my mother-in-law, a breast cancer survivor herself, what was she thinking? What about my sister-in-law? What was going on? What was the next move? I wasn’t sure at that moment; I was just sure I was driving.
Then the phone rang. Debbie was calling back.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step. The wheels were in motion. Debbie said her sister, Alisa, was already making calls to doctors. Alisa, G-d bless her, when a crisis strikes, is all over it. She takes charge, and her baby sister had just been diagnosed with breast cancer, so she wasn’t messing around. Neither was their mom, Sharon. My mother-in-law’s boyfriend, Lloyd, has a connection, and, through that connection, we have a shot at getting in to see one of the best breast cancer surgeons in Baltimore.

I now had an answer as to my destination. I had not dared make a single call, for fear of missing Debbie’s next one. She was leaving work, and we would meet up at a restaurant near our home. A couple of close friends were headed there, as well. I needed to see Debbie, and they wanted to see her, too. In just those few minutes after the call that started it all, the outpouring of support and love was already in full swing.

Debbie and I pulled up in the parking lot at almost the same time. I got out and went around to her car, and we embraced. Deb had calmed down since the phone call, maybe reassured that steps were already being taken to get in to see a doctor and discuss what was going to happen next. It felt good to hold her for even a moment, and, in that moment, I knew it was somehow going to be okay, although not sure exactly how, or why, but we will be victorious in the end.
Love is the most powerful healing force in the world. It’s like a drug, like medicine for the soul, and this love is going to make a difference in whatever is going to come next. We will not be defeated. Life will go on. My wife, my daughters, will be okay. This story will have a very different ending than the one that had been written just three years earlier when we lost Debbie’s dad to cancer. I know it with every part of my being. We are going to win.

Thanks for caring,
Mark

To purchase: It Takes 2, visit www.spouses-story.com (and click on Where to Buy The Book) or www.amazon.com/author/markbrodinsky

If your nose is cold and wet, we’ve got a problem.

If you are distracted by every smell, sight, and sound, we’ve got a problem.

If you are overwhelmed, running in circles, or running after things you will never, ever catch up to, we’ve got a problem.

Or if you are spending your time howling at the moon, we’ve got a problem.

You might just be a human beagle. Distracted by everything going on around you, feeling like there is too much stimuli coming in all at once, unable to focus on one thing at a time, multi-tasking until you don’t know which end is up. Is that you?

Then it’s time to get centered. Bring it all into focus, you’ll never get where you want to go, if you don’t know where that is. You can’t move forward if you are always going sideways, or worse ’round and ’round, chasing your tail. It’s easy to do. There is so much information, so much you feel you must accomplish, only so many hours in the day (too few), you feel like you can’t get it all done.

The trick, the secret, is focus. It’s all about slowing down, and writing it down. Focusing on just a few vital activities each day which make you productive, happy and able to express yourself and to feel love. Write it down. Choose three things that if you focused and put your full energy into would still make you feel like you lived a full day, accomplished what needs to get done and still have the time for you. Because you matter, if you’re not focused and happy, no one else around you is either.

Get a journal, choose your activities wisely and keep track. Slow it all down and tune out most of the stuff that doesn’t matter, because most of it truly doesn’t. It’s amazing how much more you can accomplish, how much happier and productive you feel when you do less…and then can in turn, be more.

Do your best to not act like, or be like, a human beagle. Yeah they have dark, welcoming eyes and are happy and loving. They are also constantly in tune to what is going on around them, eager to jump at the first distraction, easily overwhelmed by the stimuli all around them.

Plus they love a good fire hydrant now and then. That’s not you. You don’t need to fire off a stream, you just need to stream yourself into focus and be the best you can be every day. A few vital actions, void of distractions. Slow down and speed up your path to success.

Do that and then enjoy the fruits of your labor and maybe even a treat or two.
Good boy, (or girl).

Until next time thanks for taking the time,
Mark

Mark Brodinsky, Author, Blogger, Financial Services
It Takes 2. Surviving Breast Cancer: A Spouse’s Story
www.amazon.com/author/markbrodinsky
markbrodinsky @ gmail.com
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A perfectly sunny day, not a cloud in the blue sky above. There’s a reason they call her “Mother Nature”. She’s a mom after all, and any mother would jump at the chance to improve the life of even one child. So for the third year in a row she created perfect conditions for the event to benefit the Ronald McDonald House of Baltimore and what is quickly becoming a signature event in Charm City, The Red Shoe Shuffle.

This year it was Shuffle for Smiles and there were plenty on display from the 2,500 people in attendance, many of them families with young children, all there for one reason, to raise money for the House that Love Built. If there were a few thousand walking or running, it seemed as if there were just as many volunteers, all ready to cheer you on as you made your way around a few big city landmarks.

The walk goes through the heart of one birds nest, the place the Orioles call home, Oriole Park @ Camden Yards and right around another, M&T Bank Stadium where the Ravens roost every fall and winter. Those structures are at the heart of a revitalized downtown Baltimore these past twenty years and a perfect place for hearts filled with giving to show their true colors.

Just in case you didn’t know, The Ronald McDonald House provides a home away from home for seriously ill children and their families, and helps to fund programs in the local area that directly improve the well-being of children. It’s all about the children and making their journey as comfortable as possible by giving them the opportunity to have their families by their side while they undergo challenging treatments and extended care. It’s a dedicated staff at the House and literally thousands of volunteers each year who donate their time, attention and dollars to help the families who need to stay at the House to be closer to their children in need.

All along the walk yesterday there were children and their parents enjoying the time together, all knowing they were doing this for a good reason, to help others just like them, but for whom life might have handed some more serious challenges. There is little that hurts the heart more than knowing there are children in need of your help. Yesterday, you couldn’t help but feel the energy and love all along the walk that directly makes a difference in the lives of those children and their families.

The Red Shoe Shuffle is the brainchild of the Red Shoe Crew, a group of young professionals formed a few years ago who wanted to find a way to give back to the Ronald McDonald charity and came up with an idea to create a 5-K walk to raise money for the House. This year the event brought in nearly $300,000 – those dollars going directly to the Ronald McDonald Charities of Baltimore. There is always a need, the community of Maryland, including generous individual and corporate donors, provides 100% of the nearly $2 millon annual operating budget for the House. So dollars are always welcome, volunteers are as well.

The volunteers. Every where you looked yesterday there was someone holding a sign to cheer you, thank you, motivate you to keep walking and complete your “shuffle”. They say there is no such thing as a “free lunch”, but every so often along the way yesterday, if you were so inclined you could grab a free hug…good food for the soul.

With full disclosure I serve on the Board of Directors for the House and am proud to do so. My entire family and many members of the family from my New York Life Baltimore Office were proud to shuffle through town on this beautiful Sunday.

This is a non-profit with some serious momentum, a higher purpose, and plans now in the works to build a new bigger, better Ronald McDonald House in Baltimore. Unfortunately too many families are turned away from the House every year, simply based on the capacity the House can hold. A capital campaign to build a bigger, better Ronald McDonald House of Baltimore is just now beginning to ramp-up and its completion will literally change the lives of thousands of children and their families, because the need for this home-away-from-home to help healing in body and heart will never end. As long as there are children who are sick, or in need, the Ronald McDonald Charities of Baltimore plans to be there.

We can’t affect the outcome for any child dealing with a serious illness or physical challenge, but what we can do is bring joy to the journey. The Red Shoe Shuffle brings people, hearts and healing together all in one place to create an energy and synergy this photo describes so well:

Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Mark

Mark Brodinsky, Author, Blogger, Financial Services
It Takes 2. Surviving Breast Cancer: A Spouse’s Story
#1 Amazon Best-Seller
www.spouses-story.com
www.amazon.com/author/markbrodinsky
markbrodinsky@gmail.com

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