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EDITORIAL
By MICHELINE LONG
Published: January 4, 2008
There is something about his eyes that seem to penetrate the core of my heart. Day after day, as I sit in front of this computer monitor, I am humbled by a 16 year old boy’s smiling face frozen forever in a photograph sent to me by his mother. I fell in love with Pred immediately and distinctly recall grinning when I first saw that picture. When I opened the next email attachment, however, I froze. It was the same young man’s autopsy report.
I look at his photograph. I hold his autopsy report. I am still stunned all these months later. I mean, one minute he was warming up for lessons. A few minutes later, he was dead from Sudden Cardiac Death despite the fact that he had displayed no prior symptoms of heart disease. I can only imagine what his mother must have thought when she realized that her son’s Sudden Cardiac Death might have been prevented by something as simple as an ECG screening.
It would be easy to dismiss his death as being an aberration, something so rare that it couldn’t happen to our children. The more I research Sudden Cardiac Death and ARVD in particular, however, the more I have come to realize that heart disease in children is more widespread than doctors and researchers previously believed. In fact, I now believe that ECG screenings of all children should be automatic because one preventable death of one child is one death too many.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. Managed health care professionals, insurance companies, and even many doctors would argue endlessly about the cost-effectiveness of offering ECG screenings. But while they sit around arguing about how it will affect the bottom line or what statistical percentage of this country's population faces Sudden Cardiac Death, the fact remains that children are dying – suddenly and without warning.
I called a physician who informed me that the price of an office visit and ECG for a child was only $120.00 (that's $55.00 for a new patient visit and $65.00 for the ECG, as well as its reading). My mind reels at the thought. That's $.50 cents a day saved in a piggy bank for 8 months. For $120.00 per child, per year, a lot of children might not have to die.
It is in that moment that I realize that we, as parents, must insist on screenings of our children. As a parent who has very nearly lost one child and one grandchild due to cardiac problems, as a friend who has witnessed the grief of other parents who have lost their children, I personally advocate for the heart testing of all children beginning from birth. I do so knowing what it is like to suffer from economic depravity and scraping by with very little money.
Ultimately, there is no amount of money that can buy back the life of a child who has been lost. A house full of furniture is empty without the child who once lived in it. A living child wearing hand-me-down shoes and clothes, one smiling with crooked teeth, one entertained by home made toys, or fattened by beans and rice, is far more preferable to one who will only ever meet with us in our memories.
Call me a rebel, over the edge, or an old fool, but call me a woman with an experience. Parents, we all think that the loss of children happens to someone else, but it happens to some of us. It is always better to be safe than sorry and to err on the side of caution where the life of your children is concerned.
Insist on having your children's hearts screened and having their test results read by those who are knowledgeable about Sudden Death cardiac diseases. The price of heart examinations pale in comparison to the price of a funeral and a lifetime of pain and regret.