PHOENIX — At nine months old, baby Wyatt is working on his milestones. He loves taking walks with his family, all while observing and learning.
His home in Laveen is new territory to explore after he spent the first 247 days of his life at Phoenix Children's Hospital battling a unique heart defect that led to him needing a heart transplant.
"It takes a village to raise a child," his mom, MaryAnne, says with a chuckle. "It took a medical team to raise Wyatt."
The family found out about Wyatt's heart defect before he was born, leaving MaryAnne and her husband, Carl, uncertain of what Wyatt's future would look like.
Wyatt's specific heart defect caused half of his heart to not function normally. Specifically, one of his doctors, Dr. Christopher Knoll, said Wyatt's right ventricle was small, it couldn't pump blood.
After surgery and a few weeks in the hospital, MaryAnne said Wyatt went into heart failure and the team worked to figure out the next steps. Ultimately they decided it was a heart transplant that Wyatt needed.
But while waiting for the heart transplant, Wyatt needed other support in the meantime.
"We considered the option of mechanical support," Knoll, a Staff Physician at Phoenix Children's Cardiac ICU, said. "And that included the Berlin Heart, which, you know, in this patient is also very high risk to implant. The risk being that we hurt the right ventricle further."
The Berlin Heart, a ventricular assist device, was connected to Wyatt's heart at 5 weeks old. The two tubes sucked and pumped blood like Wyatt's own heart.
"In the beginning, Wyatt kept me up a lot of the nights thinking about the high-risk nature of the implant," Knoll said.
However, Knoll said Wyatt improved.
"Day by day, I would joke on rounds that he's a perfect transplant candidate for a new heart," Knoll said.
MaryAnne said the family was grateful for the Berlin Heart and waited for the transplant.
"We just lived every day as normal as we could, because that was the day that was guaranteed," Mary Anne said.
"You're just sitting there waiting for a phone call. Those several months of just, you know, us going to the hospital, you know, changing places, him going through his routines. But just with nothing really to report, I think that was the hardest thing," Carl said.
After 180 days on the transplant list, the family got the news a new heart was coming.
"There was a lot of emotions," MaryAnne said. "Definitely being happy that our son gets a second life, you know, but also being remorseful for the family because somebody had to lose their child."
After Wyatt received his transplant, he was able to go home 12 days later. Knoll credits the Berlin Heart for helping Wyatt get the nutrition he needed to help make the transplant a success, in addition to the 24/7 support of his parents.
"I think all the things that made us get here is trust in our doctors, our nurses, just having the resilience of 'we're going to, we're going to push through, we're going to push through to the other side,'" MaryAnne said. "And just hope."
Now, the family and Knoll have hope for many healthy, normal days ahead for Wyatt.
"We want him to enjoy life," Carl said."That's the whole premise. He's been given a second chance, you know, and like she mentioned, we're eternally grateful for the donors because, you know, his heart is going to continue to live within him to keep pushing and let him strive to do whatever he wants to do."
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