The alarm bells should have struck when Kalavathy and Manigandan’s first child was born on December 13 last year. The baby’s feet were bluish, but doctors at a private hospital in Arakkonam sent the happy family home.
This bliss was short-lived, says Manigandan, as every night for 20 days, his son Hamrish would bawl his lungs out and nothing would calm him down. During Pongal, Hamrish developed a cold. A general physician prescribed some medicines, and when that did not help, he referred the child to a cardiac specialist in Chennai.
Dr K R Balakrishnan, director of cardiac sciences at Fortis Malar, says, “The oxygenated blood from the lungs was going into the wrong side of the heart through an abnormal vessel. The lung pressure was phenomenally high, and we had to operate as quickly as we could to save his life.”
Hamrish was three weeks old and weighed barely 1.75 kg when he went under the scalpel. For four months he was in ICU. “His heart stopped several times and he needed a tracheostomy to help him breathe. However, six months later, he is at a normal growth level for his age and will have no other heart related problems,” says Dr Balakrishnan.
Manigandan agrees, smiling as he says, “Hamrish is a cheerful child, as normal as any child. He turns over and is very active. It is more than I could have imagined for him.”
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