Posted on 02/21/2012 2:24:08 PM PST by NYer
PENNSYLVANIA, February 21, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Ryan Marquiss, now three years old, was diagnosed with two rare heart conditions when his mother Leighann was twelve weeks pregnant. Although Leighann and Ryan’s father Henry were told by doctors that no child had survived these conditions and advised the parents to abort him, they chose instead to hope for the best and rejected abortion.
Doctors said that Ryan had only half a heart, called hypoplastic right heart syndrome. This was compounded by ectopia cordis, where his heart protruded from his chest cavity, covered only by a thin membrane.
“The doctors told us that no baby with Ryan’s combination of defects had ever survived, so the fact that he is here with us today, is just amazing. He really has astounded everyone,” Leighann told the Daily Mail.
“We wanted to let nature take its course, so we refused to have the termination,” Leighann said. “We knew it would be a miracle if he survived the birth but we were unwilling to take matters into our own hands.”
Click “like” if you want to end abortion!
The Marquiss’s revealed that Ryan was born by caesarian section at the Children’s National Medical Centre in Washington at the end of February, 2009, with a team of 30 medical professionals in attendance.
“All the odds were stacked against him. We knew that it was a miracle that he had been born alive with his heart outside his body, but then to have another life-threatening condition of only having half a heart meant that everything was against him surviving,” Leighann said.
“But he was alive and we just had to pray that he would carry on fighting.”
Ryan’s first surgery at two weeks involved placing a shunt in his heart to ensure proper circulation. This was followed by more than a dozen operations over the next two years.
“He just kept on fighting. He refused to die, and he kept on proving everyone wrong,” Leighann recalled.
The Marquiss’s remarked that their son may need further operations, possibly including a heart transplant sometime in the future, but that his life so far has been astounding, and a blessing to his parents and two sisters.
“He really is a medical miracle. When I look at him running around the playground and playing on the climbing wall, I praise God. Every day with Ryan is one we were told we wouldn’t have. So we cherish each moment,” Leighann said.
You can follow Ryan’s progress at the family’s blog here.
Ryan celebrates his 3rd birthday!
Born with half a heart, and yet he doesn’t take life halfheartedly (I just had to say that). He can’t be hugely handicapped or why would he bother with a “climbing wall”? I’m glad his family chose to give him a chance.
A wonderful story. His parents showed great courage and determination. It can’t be easy to ignore the doctors whispering in your ear about how impossible the odds for survival are.
Praise God!
I thought I knew everything about this issue but Rick Santorum set me straight yesterday. I saw him on Hannity and finally I get it. Why do doctors all but insist these moms get abortions?? Because they are afraid to be sued. Parents who deliver babies with problems or parents of a baby who dies in utero often seek someone to blame for their misery. Suing their OB seems like a good thing to do. The OB has to ensure to the courts that he ordered every possible test and did every possible diagnostic exam. If they find even one thing he did that was potentially wrong, even if it had nothing t do with the baby’s condition, the lawyers will set like dogs upon that thing as if it were a femur of beef.
And their attorneys routinely settle anyway, fault or not.
I used t think it was only some kind of eugenic “mrs. Smith, surely you don’t want to be burdened with a child with problems” — now I see that it’s even more selfish than that. But we really need tort reform to free doctors from the most egregious of lawsuits.
One of my friends has two children with congenital heart defects, both of whom have had one or more heart surgeries. She said that their cardiologist, one of the top pediatric heart specialists in the field, told her that when he goes to international conferences, cardiologists from Europe complain that most children with heart defects identified prenatally are killed. The doctors are very distressed, and keep trying to publicize, “We can fix this!!!” but the society is very resistant.
You’ll recall that they’ve had recent cases in the U.K. where unborn children with cleft palate and clubfoot have been aborted for “eugenic” reasons, when those conditions can be corrected with surgery in almost all cases.
This little guy is a miracle and sounds like he has a lot of spunk.
Lord Bless and protect him for any future operations.
God Bless the parents for putting this in His hands.
ping for later
My daughter’s club foot didn’t even need surgery, just castings and then corrective shoes for about a year and a half.
Bizarre that it’s OK to kill for clubbed feet but giving kids hormones for trans-gender is on the rise.
I agree on the corrective nature of clubbed feet. My daughter’s club foot (in both feet) didn’t even need surgery, just castings and then corrective shoes for about a year and a half.
I’m glad your daughter’s feet got fixed! It’s awful that people think a child should die, rather than have such a minor defect corrected after birth. It’s a small step from that to killing a child (or an adult!) when a health problem occurs at any point in life.
When friends of ours had their Down’s baby someone said to them, “I didn’t know doctors allowed that to happen these days.”
At 37, when I was pregnant with my daughter my doctor would have refused to continue seeing me if I hadn’t gotten the amnio test even though I wasn’t going to abort. It was to protect him which I can’t say I blame him. On a related note, I was on a baby website/forum at the time and one woman was considering suing because she had a big baby and tore—the doctor had underestimated the weight of the baby. I made some kind of reply to her and of course that didn’t go over well. She got really nasty when it was pointed out how absurd she sounded.
I doubt that “most” amniocentesis tests result in abortion or miscarriage. You really have to stomp your foot to keep from having one, if you’re over 35, and most of them don’t show any problems with the baby.
It’s true that most negative prenatal diagnoses result in abortion, though, even though some of them are incorrect.
You don’t have a choice to get an amnio if over 35??
If we kill our own kids who aren’t quite perfect, it’s not too hard for any serious accident to be life threatening - even if you’re only disabled, people kill you to not be burdened by the care.
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