Tallant's Story
Tallant was born Wednesday evening June 4, 2003 at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. He had a rather traumatic birth as he didn't breathe for the first few minutes of his life. He had to be resuscitated and taken immediately to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where he spent the next 4 days being closely monitored. He was finally discharged from the hospital, healthy and well.
Tallant had not shown any signs of heart trouble during the pregnancy. At his three week check-up with his Cardiologist, he was diagnosed with Aortic and Pulmonary Stenosis. He visited the cardiologist every three weeks until the pressures in his heart escalated to a level that required surgery. Tallant underwent heart surgery on August 26th at the age of 2 1/2 months.
Tallant's surgery and recovery went perfectly. He experienced no setbacks during surgery or while in the PCCU. He had a "textbook" procedure and was home playing again in a weeks time. We saw his recovery as a miracle! Because of Kaylen's unique condition, the cardiologist was able to diagnose Tallant at early age and address his condition before his heart started to weaken.
In November, the pressures in Tallant's heart started rising again. The echocardiogram showed that the patch he received during his first surgery, had formed a kink in his Aorta as he continued to grow. It was determined that he need another surgery to fix the kink in his patch.
On the morning of March 2, 2004 we took Tallant back to Vanderbilt Children's Hospital for his second surgery. He immediately experienced a negative reaction to anesthesia and went into cardiac arrest on the operating room table. The medical staff performed CPR on him for almost an hour until they could stabilize him on the heart-lung by-pass machine called ECMO. They were unable to start the surgery, due to his unstable condition and he was taken directly to the PCCU. Even though he was on ECMO, Tallant was doing very well. His heart had great responses and everything was improving. We had decided to take Tallant back to surgery Thursday morning on ECMO and correct the kink in his patch.
Wednesday evening Tallant started showing signs of swelling around his brain. His CT scan showed there was a little swelling, but no bleeding, so they started him on medicine to alleviate the swelling. That night he suffered severe brain swelling that damaged his brain stem and left him in a terminal state. Tallant passed away the next morning, March 4th, at the age of 9 months.
Tallant was so happy and healthy; we had so much fun watching him grow and learn new things everyday. He loved bath time more than anything; he would splash and kick his feet so much that he would absolutely soak whoever was giving him a bath. His smile and laugh were infectious; you couldn't look at Tallant and not want pick him up and kiss him. He was the most beautiful boy we have ever seen.
