Pediatric cardiac surgeons Kenneth A. Fox and Stephen J. Dewan mend broken hearts. Staff physicians at Austin's Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgeons, they are also board members and surgeons for Heart Gift, a nonprofit organization whose mission statement is "To provide desperately needed heart surgery to underprivileged children around the world."
"Heart Gift was just being started when I was being recruited to come down here from the University of Michigan where I was completing a fellowship in pediatric cardiovascular surgery," Fox says. "I was to be the first full-time pediatric cardiac surgeon in Central Texas."
Fox arrived in Austin last July and this past March he performed life-saving heart surgery on a two and-a-half-year-old boy from Nicaragua.
"Deyvin (Rivera) was the first child this year sponsored by Heart Gift," he says. "He had a ventricular septal defect, a hole between the two pumping chambers of his heart. The operation repaired the hole. If left untreated, Deyvin would have developed heart failure and eventually died."
"One of the difficulties with Heart Gift is that you have to approach these kids as if they are not going to get back to modern medical care," Fox adds. "We have to figure out which children we can do things for, kids that may have a hole in their heart or valve dysfunctions, things that can be repaired and don't need life-long medication."
Because Heart Gift is limited to children who won't need life-long care, Fox says there are enough kids with heart problems they can help and hope to see at least one a month.
Heart Gift was co-founded by 17 area doctors including Westbank residents Fox, Dewan, and Drs. Andrew Hume, Jeffery Jobe and Stephen Settle. It is dependent on the efforts of the community to help children receive a chance in life. For more information about the program, send an e-mail to HeartGift@austin.rr.com.
Dewan, who shares his life with wife Diane and children Brendan, Michael and Katherine, originated the congenital heart surgery program at Austin's Children's Hospital when it opened in 1988 and has worked with children through Heart Gift and other organizations.
"We have taken care of children from Honduras, Mexico, Kosovo and Nicaragua," Dewan says. "The one thing that stands out more than anything else is the appreciation that the guest family and kids have for what everybody is doing for them. Not just the health care aspect, but the hospitality and kindness everybody extends to them when they arrive in town.
"Our hope for the future is that we can maintain a program where we can, through the generosity of people from the community, offer help for children that aren't as fortunate as the children in Central Texas," he adds. "Through that love and support we can take care of children from all over the world."
"There are two things that make Heart Gift work," Fox says. "First, financial contributions and second, community involvement. When Deyvin and his mother arrived they lived with a host family in Round Rock and were taken care of by the whole community. They were showered with affection."
Although he specializes in pediatric cardiac surgery, Fox works closely with the other doctors at CTVS.
"I work with some adults who have congenital heart disease which started out in childhood," he says.
A doctor for 14 years, Fox, 37, shares his life with wife Katherine, a clinical pharmacist, and daughters Kara Anne, 6 and Erika Nikole, 4.
"My decision to specialize and do pediatric heart surgery came about the time my second daughter was born," he says. "Because of that I focused on children and dedicated my career to helping kids. I see my kids in the faces of all the kids I treat."
For the most part, Fox says his daily job is a happy one and most of the children he treats in Austin go home mended and smiling. But he says it's difficult not to get close to his young patients who range in age from newborn to teen-agers.
"Kids who are sicker are in the hospital longer and we bond with them," he says. "It's cool to see them get better and come back and be happy."
Most of Fox's young patients go on to live healthy lives, but on the rarest of occasions a child might not pull through.
"Sometimes we think it's going to happen (a child won't survive), but we go in and it's modern medicine keeping the child alive," he says.
"Some things we can fix and some children who we think will make it, don't. It's very difficult and hard. Fortunately, it doesn't happen often, but it does happen. You have to learn what times to be emotionally involved and what times to be distant."
