Still, death hung over me like an ominous storm. While I looked and acted like any little kid, doctors still warned that I had a very long and painful road ahead of me. When I was five years old, cardiologists told my parents that I'd soon grow out of the valve and shunt I received when I was three days old, and I'd need a new one. This meant that when I was nine or ten years old, I'd have yet another open heart surgery to get a replacement, which would include a bigger shunt and a bovine valve rather than a rubber valve. The doctors also said that valve would also be temporary, and my family should expect to see me go through another open heart surgery every five to ten years.
This obviously troubled my family very much, because the last thing they wanted to do was go through the same traumatic experience over and over again. I was such a healthy and energetic 5-year-old. They didn't want to see my health get crippled ever again, yet, there they were, being told by the same cardiologists who worked on my heart when I was a newborn, that I'd need occasional open heart surgeries every 5 years and check-ups every three to six months for the rest of my life.
Naturally, my grandpa Lyle returned home and immediately prayed for healing once again. Unfortunately, not everyone in my family was so faithful. Suffering is a double-edged sword. Sometimes, it brings people closer to God, and other times, it pushes people away. My dad ended up losing his faith over that prospect of having to witness me go through the same trauma over and over again. He could not understand how an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God could allow such horrible things to happen to me, and as a father, who pledged to protect me for life, not being able to protect me from such horrible things was crushing.
Months went by. When I was six years old during a routine check-up at the cardiology hospital, doctors were stunned by what they discovered. My temporary heart valve had been used as scaffolding for an actual, natural, and completely functional pulmonary heart valve to grow over. This had never been witnessed before. Pretty much over night, my pulmonary heart valve grew back, effectively curing my heart, and saving me from ever needing another open heart surgery ever again. My case spread like wildfire, especially when doctors wrote about it in medical journals.
When doctors told my family about this, they were all equally shocked! A prayer had been answered. The impossible happened. And to this day, I am the only person to ever have been cured of Pulmonary Atresia.
Doctors couldn't explain it, because I was told old for stem cells to regrow a heart valve like that. Stem cells last for only a couple years maximum, and I was six years old when my heart valve grew back. Plus, my heart had already been messed with too much to be cured by modern medicine. It was deformed thanks to genetics, and cut through and reshaped during surgery, killing the chances of me ever having a normal heart again. Something, rather supernatural, had to happen to grow back that heart valve. Even my doctors admitted that, although they were rather reluctant to basically say, "God did it.", as I'm sure any scientist would be.
