Jennifer Verkaik has always been good at reading faces.
That skill is what made her press her doctor during a routine ultrasound in her fourth month of pregnancy with twins, more than six years ago. Jennifer’s doctor wanted to refer her to Valley Children’s Hospital, but the reason wasn’t entirely clear to Jennifer.
“I’ve been a teacher for 13 years, so I can read a face,” Jennifer says. “I said, ‘Can you give me a heads up or I’ll drive myself crazy.’”
One of the baby’s hearts looks enlarged. Those were the words that started Jennifer and her family down a completely unexpected, and at the time terrifying, path.
“When I left there, I was a mess,” says Jennifer, who attended that routine appointment alone. “It was one of the scariest moments, not knowing what to expect.”
Jennifer’s appointment at Valley Children’s wouldn’t come for another two weeks – two of the longest of her life, filled with deep thoughts and conversations with her husband John. When she finally met Pediatric Cardiologist Dr. Kenneth Rouillard at the Hospital, the diagnosis was almost immediate.
One of the twins had Ebstein’s anomaly, a rare congenital heart defect that can cause blood to leak through valves as well as heart enlargement or failure. This was life-threatening.
Jennifer saw Dr. Rouillard monthly from that point on. He came up with a plan for her to give birth in Visalia, with a team in place to transport newborn Madison to Valley Children’s about an hour after. Madison stayed at Valley Children’s for two weeks.
Almost a year later, Madison underwent open-heart surgery. Five days after that, back at home, Madison was crawling around the house and keeping her parents on their toes. Now an energetic and daring six-year-old, Madison is Valley Children’s Kids Day Ambassador for the event’s 30th anniversary on March 7.
“There are so many special things about this case,” Dr. Rouillard says. “One was the prenatal diagnosis. Having that made it better, because it could have been much worse for the family without it. Had we not been able to transfer her here and watch her very closely, things could have gotten bad.”
But from the time of their first meeting, Dr. Rouillard did all he could to ease the Verkaiks’ minds. He informed Jennifer and John about the condition, about the options and about the plan he was putting in place. He educated the family and answered every question they had. He certainly did not want information coming from other, less-knowledgeable sources.
And in the age of the internet, that is incredibly easy to find.
“He was always very upfront,” Jennifer says. “He told me, ‘No Googling allowed! You may get on the internet, but you may not Google her condition.’ That was hard, but my husband had a conversation with me when we got home and we agreed we wouldn’t. He was the rock. I’m the kind to worry, and we didn’t want the what-ifs of what could happen, so I followed instructions.
“But because of the way he laid everything out, I never felt I needed to Google it.”
That was a critical part of the process.
“I see that as our No. 1 responsibility, to make sure the parents understand as much as we can provide in terms of knowledge,” Dr. Rouillard says. “If you’ve ever been on the other side, you know how easy it is to panic. If you’re a parent and things happen that you didn’t know could happen, that breaks the trust, so we see as our primary goal sharing knowledge and experience with the family.”
More than six years later, there is almost no evidence of Madison’s condition. There is a scar on her chest that is barely visible, if at all, in public, and even Dr. Rouillard has trouble telling Madison apart from her sister, Makenzie.
To illustrate that, Dr. Rouillard played a trick on the sonographer during Madison’s annual check-up in July – Madison will have these until she is 16. When the sonographer went to image who she thought was Madison, she had a puzzled look on her face because she didn’t see the scar. The girls broke character and the joke by laughing, but Dr. Rouillard believes it shows the level of work done in this case.
“It reassures everyone that we’ve done the best we can,” he says.
Jennifer agrees, but she doesn’t need the funny antics to know it. She sees Madison playing with Makenzie and big brother, Travis, every day. She sees Madison in her second home, the swimming pool. She sees her at dance class and singing, and she sees the sass that has Jennifer thinking the twins’ next birthday might be their 16th.
Most importantly, Jennifer and John see their healthy, happy daughter.
Madison knows she had surgery, but she shyly giggles when it’s talked about around her. It’s still a surreal event in her young life as she tells people, “I had my heart fixed at Valley Children’s.”
The same place her parents got their peace of mind.
Click here to learn more and register to volunteer for Kids Day 2017.