no surgery, no scar, no problem
Photos By Pete Stone
Caring for a new baby in addition to going back to work is exhausting for anybody. New mom Melissa Ray knew that, but she still had to wonder if there wasn’t more to why she was so overwhelmingly tired.
She and her husband, Marcus, delighted in playing with Mason, their little bundle of energy who was born in July 2005. “Mason never seems to slow down for anything except to watch a basketball game on TV with us – he just loves to follow the action on the screen,” says Ray, who works in marketing for the Portland Trail Blazers.
But as her son’s energy grew, Ray’s diminished. Something was wrong. “I felt so tired,” she remembers. “I constantly had headaches and it was nearly impossible for me to get out of bed in the morning.”
Visits to Ray’s family practice physician at first revealed nothing that would explain her symptoms, but then her doctor found something disturbing.
Recalls Ray, “Dr. Susie Bobenrieth was listening to my chest and said she heard a heart murmur. I immediately thought of Mason and was concerned that it could be something serious that would prevent me from caring for him.” A sonogram of Ray’s heart revealed a small hole between the pumping chambers of her heart. “Later, Dr. Bobenrieth told me that I was very lucky that I didn’t have a stroke during my pregnancy or delivery. Even though it was something I was probably born with, it was something I had to get taken care of very soon.”
The cardiologist who read her echocardiogram referred her to Todd Caulfield, M.D., at Providence Heart and Vascular Institute. “He told me Dr. Caulfield was the one who could fix my heart – that he was doing some revolutionary things.”
Ray sensed this was true as soon as she met Dr. Caulfield in his office at Columbia Cardiology Associates. “He showed me the little clamshell device that he wanted to insert into my heart to close the hole, and explained that it could be placed there with just a catheter – so no open-heart surgery would be necessary,” says Ray. “I was amazed something like this was possible, but his explanation and approach put me completely at ease. He was so down to earth – we talked about my job, and how the Trail Blazers finally seemed to be on the right track. I told him if he was able to fix my heart, I would be happy to treat him to a game.”