Kaiden Bracken did what everyone else did over the holidays – he put on some weight, to the delight of his family and to the relief of the transplant team that gave him a new heart last month.
“He’s growing rapidly because of the new heart,” says his mom, Kristen Bracken, who has been at his side nearly every second since his own heart failed at three months old.
He also passed a major milestone last week – he celebrated his first birthday. For the occasion, he got a day pass to come back home to Vero Beach, just as he did for Christmas.
Judging by his birthday-boy photos, being one becomes him. His little face is fuller and he is much happier, says his mom. He’s still on a feeding tube, but he’s beginning to drink a little bit more from his bottle.
His heart is doing fine, too, though his immune system is still so compromised by anti-rejection drugs that, apart from the slew of doctors, nurses and therapists, he can only see his immediate family. He remains a resident, along with his mom, of housing for patient families across the street from Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in South Florida’s Hollywood, where he spent eight months of the first year of his life and where the transplant took place.
The ten-week period after a heart transplant is a crucial phase of the body’s adjustment. Twice a week, doctors run extensive tests on Kaiden, fine-tuning his medications and monitoring every change from his weight and measurements to his blood.
“A typical day is: I get up at 5, hook him up to his feeding pump, then he’s at the lab at the hospital to have blood work done at 6:30,” says Kristen, who is with him round the clock, and carries a diaper bag “packed to the brim with medications, and everything you have to bring to feed him.”
Afterward, they meet with the transplant team, which takes his vitals and does an echocardiogram. That lasts until around 11 a.m., when it’s time for Kaiden’s oral feeding. Then comes an hour-long nap, and an afternoon of physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy, to help him with the last remaining issues from a stroke he suffered during his wait for a new heart.
The two stay up for one last session hooked up to the feeding tube and finally he goes to bed at 11 p.m.
After all that, he sleeps through the night.
“He’s a trouper,” says Kristen. “He’s so easy-going. Nothing really bothers him, even a dirty diaper. He only cries if there’s something acutely wrong.”
And this mom fully understands just how acutely things can go wrong. With the transplant, though, everything went right. Kaiden’s “angel heart,” as doctors called it, became available Dec. 8. After six hours of surgery, Kaiden woke up to finally find himself untethered from the two-ton generator that had kept a mechanical heart pumping.
“He’s very happy,” says Kristen of the change she sees in her baby. “He’s cooing, he’s playing. He’s enjoying the freedom of space – not having to be in bed all the time.”
And if he couldn’t eat any birthday cake, he did enjoy the one his grandparents George and Linda O’Malley got for him. It was a “smash” cake, the latest must-have for first-birthday photo ops: a tiny cake meant to be destroyed.
Ever the compliant patient, Kaiden cooperated fully.
“He got his hands in there and smashed it around,” reports his mom. “It was an amazing day.”