Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/1035803
t m c » p u l s e | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 8 21 t m c » p u l s e | o c t o b e r 2 0 1 8 Facing page: Ethan Page, 8, poses with his bat for a portrait at his home in Kingwood, Texas. Above: Ali Dodge-Khatami, M.D., Ph.D., responds to questions before performing heart surgery on Ethan Page at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital. I t's a hot August night in Kingwood, a planned community in northeast Houston, and 8-year-old Ethan Page leaps effortlessly to catch a baseball. Without pause, he snaps the ball back to his coach. "Ethan has the strongest arm on our team and I'm not just saying that," said Brandon Kirk, assistant coach of the Dynasty, the competitive baseball team for which Ethan plays. This boy is a natural athlete. Long and lean, Ethan stands a head taller than most of his teammates. Watching him run, throw, catch and pitch, it's hard to believe that not even one month prior, Ethan underwent a four-hour heart surgery to repair a ventricular septal defect (VSD)—a hole in the wall of the heart that separates the two lower chambers. At birth, Ethan weighed 9 pounds 14.6 ounces—larger than the average new- born. After a difficult delivery at Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital, Julie Page and her husband, Brent, were told that their baby boy was born with a heart defect. A diagnosis at Texas Children's Hospital later confirmed that Ethan had three VSDs in his heart. "His VSDs were small enough at birth to not need to do anything about it immediately," Julie said. "We've always been told that a lot of VSDs close naturally over time and that his weren't consid- ered to be large—they were small to medium." But when Ethan began having trouble breathing at baseball practice, the Page family knew surgery would be imminent. "He is just so healthy and active, so anyone you would tell he had a hole in his heart, they were shocked," Julie said. Ethan was nervous about surgery, but eager to get it behind him. His only stipulation was that it not interfere with baseball. He didn't want to miss the Nations Baseball 9U and 10U World Series, held in San Marcos, Texas in early July. "Am I going to miss baseball? Am I going to miss the World Series? Am I going to miss fall tryouts?" Ethan asked his parents, repeatedly. As fate would have it, a surgeon specializing in a minimally invasive technique to repair congenital heart defects—a technique that offers a reduced recovery time—was headed Surgery with minimal cuts offers quick recovery KEEPING HIS HEART IN THE GAME B y B r i t n i R . M c A s h a n to Houston, just in time for a break in Ethan's vigorous schedule. This surgeon avoids traditional open heart surgery, which involves making a long vertical incision down the sternum and cracking the sternum to gain access to the organ— in favor of a small incision under the right arm. (continued)