Toddler reconnects with nurse who detected life-threatening condition
Jacob Roman seems like a normal, active, healthy 3-year-old. One would never guess he could have died just hours after he was born.
His mother, Vicelis Negron, said she has been searching for the nurse she credits with saving her son's life.
"I been thinking about it since a week after I had Jacob, after I came to my senses," she said.
She calls that nurse, later identified as Claudia Lopez, her angel.
After finally reaching Lopez through social media, they got to meet again for the first time since the baby was born.
"It was very humbling to know you made a difference in someone's life," Lopez said.
Lopez didn't know exactly what was wrong with baby Jacob, but she knew he needed a doctor quickly.
"He was turning blue before our eyes," she said. "I knew something had taken him over very quickly."
She quickly brought him to the neonatal intensive care unit.
Jacob was born with a serious heart condition that prevented blood from getting to his lungs. It is the same condition talk show host Jimmy Kimmel's son Billy was born with.
"It's a serious congenital heart disease," Dr. Medhat Philobos said. "It causes a severe problem, and he needed immediate attention."
Jacob has already endured two open heart surgeries in his first three years of life, and doctors expect another one before he turns 5. Despite the unusual experience of having so many surgeries at such a young age, Jacob is expected to live a normal life once his condition is treated, doctors said.
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