The heart that could
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on June 5, 2016 1:45 AM
Full Size
News-Argus/PHYLLIS MOORE
Jason "Jase" Kendall, 2 and one-half, enjoys playing with his toys in his Goldsboro home.
Jason Kendall is all boy.
"He jumps off of anything he can jump off," Cari Kendall, says of her 2-and-one-half-year-old son. "He loves superheroes, dinosaurs and robots.
"He is not afraid of anything."
"He will chase it down," echoes his father, John Kendall, adding, "Bugs, you forgot bugs."
And he loves his little brother, seven-month-old Jaxon, the couple says.
The rambunctious tyke, though, almost didn't make it into the world.
Mrs. Kendall suffered a miscarriage with her first son. When she became pregnant again, they began seeing a specialist, now their son's cardiologist, at Duke.
"We had like a million ultrasounds," she says now.
"Jase," as the family calls him, was born with HRHS, hyperplastic right heart syndrome.
The Kendalls were told at the outset there would be three surgeries.
The first was done when he was four days old.
"We got to hold him long enough for one family picture and then he was taken away from us," Mrs. Kendall said.
"So we only got to hold him for like two minutes without tubes and wires. We could not hold him until he was about 20 days old without anything attached to him."
He spent 18 days in the hospital after that initial surgery and shortly after had to be treated for blood clots.
"Because he is a heart baby, he is just so susceptible to all the illnesses out there," his mother said.
"A normal cold turns into pneumonia," added his dad.
"Within his first year, he had bronchitis, he had pneumonia, ear infections and croup," Mrs. Kendall said.
A second surgery was performed at five months old, with Jase hospitalized for five days.
The third surgery planned, called the Fontan procedure, is a palliative surgical procedure used in children with complex congenital heart defects. It will divert the venous blood from the right atrium to the pulmonary arteries. It is scheduled for July 6 and, barring complications, will require a seven-to-10-day hospital stay.
While the prognosis is good, Kendall said it does come with a caveat -- more susceptibility to having a heart transplant later in life.
"But right now he's not a candidate for it because he's done so good," Mrs. Kendall said. "He's OK. He still has his moments, like he gets out of breath very easily. He can just be playing in here and gets out of breath."
And he is prone to turning blue, a by-product of low oxygen circulating in his body, they said.
The young parents have coped with the situation pretty well, they say. But that doesn't mean it has been easy.
"Me and John were at each other's nerves and bickering all the time," Mrs. Kendall said recently. "It was because we were so stressed because of the heart cath (catheterization done in advance of the surgery). We were just so nervous about it.
"I can just like feel my body getting stressed out. You don't think about it until you have to pack a million bags to go up there, that type of thing."
Kendall, who works at a rock quarry in Knightdale, takes it all in stride.
"She's really emotional, so I've got to be the strong one," he said, admitting that they sometimes trade off.
"We definitely lean on each other. We do take turns, being strong and being the one who has to walk away for a minute," his wife said.
They have had lots of practice developing their ability to cope.
"We were 20 weeks pregnant whenever we lost our first son, John Garrett," Mrs. Kendall said. "We were excited. We had all these hopes and dreams and then they were just kind of taken away from us."
"That was either going to make us or break us," her husband said.
"That's what we tell everyone. And if we could survive that, it was like God was telling us something else was coming," Mrs. Kendall said.
"This is your test. If you two can survive losing your first son, then you're going to have to survive doing everything with Jason.
"It's like Jason and John Garrett, they were kind of tied together."
"God showed us that we could lose and still love," Kendall said.
"But without the loss of John we wouldn't have Jason."
The support of family and friends has also been helpful, the couple said.
A fundraiser is planned for later this month to offset some of the medical expenses.
Organizers are Kristen Coleman and Jake Hunter.
"We're calling it, 'The Little Heart That Could,'" Mrs. Kendall said.
A hot dog sale and bluegrass concert will be held on the lawn of Brogden United Methodist Church on June 25 from 5:30-8 p.m. The Casey Bluegrass Trio -- Daniel Casey and his children, Samantha and Adam -- will perform.
The $8 tickets can be purchased in advance, at Casey Garden Center, or at the door.
A GoFundMe page has also been set up, at www.gofundme.com/jasonkendall.
For more information, call 919-440-9412.