Archive for Ellen Greenlaw
From ECMO to star athlete: Kobe’s story
Kobe Perry is fast. This year, the 12-year-old from New Hampshire placed #2 in the United States in the indoor 60-meter sprint and at #10 in the 200-meter for boys in his age group. “Watching Kobe run now, you would never know that he had a heart condition when he was a toddler and had ... Read More
New study ties residual lesion score (RLS) to cardiac surgery outcomes
How well a patient does after surgery for congenital heart disease (CHD) depends on a large number of variables, ranging from patient characteristics to preoperative status to anatomic complexity to perioperative factors. One of the most important predictors of adverse events or reintervention is the presence of residual lesions — structural cardiac abnormalities that remain ... Read More
Helping your kids understand and cope with anti-Asian racism
Over the past year, there has been an alarming increase in anti-Asian sentiment and discrimination in the United States. The advocacy and hate reporting group Stop AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) Hate reports more than 6,600 hate incidents — including harassment, shunning, and physical attacks — since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. ... Read More
Talking to your child about slurs: When words hurt
Imagine the following scenarios: You’re walking down the street with your teenage son and an adult in a passing car yells a racial slur out the window at you. You’re at your local playground you overhear your daughter direct an anti-gay slur at another child. As a parent, what do you do? “These conversations are ... Read More
Back to school… back to what?
This month, many children and teens in Massachusetts and around the country are finally heading back to school in person. For some kids this news might elicit jumps for joy, while others might feel nervous or afraid. Wherever you or your kids land on this range of feelings, there will no doubt be an emotional ... Read More
From Virginia to Boston for a kidney transplant: Joshy’s story
Joshy Buchheit is a lot like most 4-year-old boys. He loves playing in the mud, riding his scooter, and keeping up with his three older brothers, Joseph, Ethan, and Evan. But what sets Joshy apart is that he was born with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and had a kidney transplant when he was just 20 ... Read More
Freak accident leads to Dylan’s passion for neurosurgery
It was the summer of 2019. Dylan Keusch had just graduated from prep school and was planning to major in Industrial Labor Relations at Cornell University in the fall. His life felt pretty perfect. “Everything was going great — I was a national club team swimmer at the peak of my career, I was headed ... Read More
You’ve had the COVID-19 vaccine. What now?
As more and more people across the country get vaccinated for COVID-19, the rules for social distancing are also slowly shifting. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rolled out new guidelines for those who are fully vaccinated. But these rules can still be a bit confusing for families, especially when some family ... Read More
COVID-19: What we know and how to cope with an uncertain future
Last March, when the world as we knew it shut down because of the coronavirus, we imagined we’d be home for a few weeks at most. But here we are, a year later, still unsure when our lives might get back to “normal.” And it’s still unclear what a new normal might even look like. ... Read More
A repair for Charleston’s complex heart
Trey and Jandie Steele both work in medical device sales. They have spent lots of time in hospital operating rooms and are comfortable discussing complex medical procedures with doctors and surgeons. And yet, when their second child, Charleston, was diagnosed with a number of congenital heart defects one week after her birth, they felt blindsided ... Read More