At 9 months old, my youngest son Jack was diagnosed with a heart murmur. At 10 months old, he was diagnosed with ASD—Atrial Septal Defect. His was different in that there are 2 holes in the membrane separating the left and right upper chambers of his heart.

Thereafter, every 6 months, Jack had a cardiology appointment where they'd do an EKG and an echocardiogram. At one point, Jack's doctor said the holes were getting smaller. At his last appointment, he told us that because of the location of the holes, they likely hadn't gotten smaller--they're very difficult to measure anyway.

We went through a process that took about 2 months: we talked to Dr Ferry, who said he would try to perform catheterization on Jack and close the holes; we had to wait for authorization from our medical group for the procedure to take place at Cedars-Sinai, as no other hospital in the Valley would do it; and, we finally had to wait for the weeks to turn into days until Jack went into surgery August 8, 2007.

The procedure failed, and now our only other option is open-heart surgery.