Make Your Life Count

My son sent me this YouTube video of a child, Brenden Foster. Brenden died before he got to finish high school or go on his first date. But he died a hero. He lived his short life as best he could under the most difficult of circumstances. He made his life count.

His words stirred up memories of some of the patients I have met who have changed my life. Enter Hannah Collins, 17 years ago. She was just three months old, with a small red mark on her face and wheezing. I knew what was coming next. We tried many different medications and laser treatments, but soon her face became replaced by that red mark and she needed a tracheotomy (an artificial opening in her neck) in order to breathe.

I tried to reassure Sandy, Hannah’s mom and a pediatric intensive care unit nurse (PICU), that these hemangiomas (blood vessel tumors) would fade and Hannah would be all right by the age of 3 years. After all that was what I had been taught and was telling this mom.Well, she wasn’t all right by age 3. Sandy and I independently searched for some help and we found Dr. Milton Waner, an otolaryngologist from Little Rock, Arkansas. A trail blazer, he was treating children with vascular birthmarks with different kinds of lasers and removing them with cold steel surgery. This was very radical at the time, but Hannah needed something radical. I fought to have Hannah’s insurance let her see him. This family of modest means travelled to Little Rock more than a dozen times.

Hannah at Age 3

After I began to see how she was responding, I, too, travelled to Arkansas and spent a week learning about the behavior of vascular birth marks, how to treat them with lasers, surgery and embolization (cutting off their blood supply). The next year Dr. Waner came to Buffalo to kick off our Vascular Birth Marks center in January, 1997. While he was there, he operated on Hannah once again.

Hannah underwent over 50 surgeries to remove her birthmarks, reconstruct her face and monitor her airway so the tracheotomy could be removed, which it was by the age of 5 years. I was overjoyed at the first picture we have of Hannah swimming, something a child cannot do with a tracheotomy. You would think this would be a badly scarred child, both inside and out. Not so. Her mother Sandy became the nurse for our Vascular Birthmarks Center. This week she brought me Hannah’s high school graduation picture. She told me that Hannah is going to become a nurse. She want to help others face illness. She is indeed beautiful, both inside and out.

Hannah's Graduation Photo

Both Brenden and Hannah faced difficult times. One left a legacy and the other will have a life to do the same. Heroes and heroines are not so hard to find as one might think.