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A baby boy born with two life-threatening holes in his heart has just celebrated his first birthday – thanks to a cow heart.
Ruben Weber-Jackson, was suffering from restricted breathing because of the holes. and two major operations involving the use of tissues from the heart of a cow had to be carried out to solve the breathing problem.
When Ruben was born last year, his parents took him as a happy and healthy baby but never knew there was a serious unseen problem.
But when he was two weeks and two days old, she noticed his breathing was unusual.
His Mother said: ‘I just had a niggling feeling something wasn’t right. He was breathing funny but I thought I was just being a paranoid parent. But it got worse and I took him to the GP, who sent us to Hull Royal Infirmary.’
Hospital scans showed Ruben had two holes in his heart and a narrowing of the aorta.
It meant his circulation was severely compromised – which explained his unusual breathing and purple lips – and he was rushed in for dangerous open-heart surgery.
It was during the second operation where the doctors used tissue from a cow’s heart, which has saved his life.
The procedure, known as a bovine pericardial patch, has saved Ruben’s life and allowed him to live to see his first birthday.
His mother said: ‘There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think about how different our lives could be now -how very close we came to losing him.
‘In some ways, I think he subconsciously knows – he is such a happy baby and he seems to want to make the most out of life.’
‘Throughout everything, people kept saying to me “I couldn’t be as strong as you are”. But the truth is, you don’t know how strong you can be until you’ve not got a choice.’
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