Every day is a present to Tayler and Nick Monroe.

In over a month, the couple will celebrate their son Owen’s second birthday in April.

“Any moment we get with him is special,” Tayler Monroe said. The first-time mother remembered a time when life looked far bleaker. 

Owen James Monroe is alive thanks to a novel modern surgery — the world’s first-ever partial heart transplantation. 

Before Owen entered this world, a pregnancy scan by medical teams at Duke Children’s Hospital revealed a condition affecting the child’s body: a single leaky valve attached to his heart instead of two. 

Doctors call this truncus arteriosus.

“It was very beneficial finding out his diagnosis in utero,” Tayler Monroe said.   

Tayler Monroe said she was almost halfway through the pregnancy when they discovered the truncus arteriosus, which gave them time to put a plan in place that would change their lives.

Days after Owen’s birth, the family from Leland in Brunswick County said they learned Owen needed new heart valves right away.

“There were a lot of times we were seeing everybody leaving with their babies as we were going to the cafeteria or leaving the hospital or something like that and sitting there going, ‘Well, when do we get to take ours home?’” Nick Monroe said.

Dr. Joseph Turek envisioned a strategy for heart transplantation that had never been successfully executed before. 

“We were really pressed for time because when a child has this kind of leakage off of the one valve he has coming out of his heart, you don’t have a lot of time before that child is going to start to do poorly,” Turek said.

Turek is the chief of pediatric surgery at Duke Children’s Hospital. 

“We’re looking at an echocardiogram of a child’s heart,” the surgeon said as he pointed to a mounted visual ultrasound reading of Owen’s heart. The Cleveland Clinic describes an echocardiogram as an “ultrasound test that checks the structure and function of your heart.”

Turek explained the mixture of ebbing colors on the screen.

“Unfortunately, in the picture here, this orange jet of blood going backwards is actually a leaky valve,” he said. “It’s a severely leaky valve. So the one valve that this child, from the truncus arteriosus, did not work well. It puts us in a real bind as far as how we’re able to repair this, because now he needs two valves coming out of his heart.”

Turek had his work cut out for him because he could not waste time nor wait months for Owen to receive a new heart. Duke medical teams told the family Owen required a heart transplant, but the options were limited.

“We could ask for a full heart transplant and try to put him on the list. The problem is, in this day and age, is that children wait about 4-6 months before they can get a heart for full transplantation.”

According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, which is housed under the Health Resources & Services Administration, there are at least 103,233 people on the organ waitlist in America. A person is added to the waitlist every 8 minutes and an average of 17 people die every day waiting for a transplant, according to the network.

Since Turek knew waitlists can take half a year, he presented an innovative option to the Monroes.

“They knew it was a grave situation, and I tried to be as honest with them as possible,” Turek said.

He proposed a living tissue partial heart transplant — using two healthy valves from a deceased donor’s heart muscle of a similar age.

“The first question his parents asked was, ‘Is this something that’s ever been done in a human?’ And I said, ‘No, but it’s been done in five piglets,’” Turek said.

“There was no question,” Tayler Monroe said. “It was like I basically said, ‘Do you feel comfortable doing this?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’”

The family said Owen waited only 17 days to receive new healthy heart valves. This meant two new valves of a physically similar size could be implanted to grow alongside the child’s heart and make history in the process.

Turek said they couldn’t have done it without “pre-gaming for the entire operation” using an anatomical replica from a 3D printer. 

“To know what you are getting into ahead of time is crucial,” Turek said. “It’s still amazing to me how a family can put so much faith in you and trust in you to do something for their child you’ve never done before.”

The parents said Turek is now a part of their family forever.

“Just knowing that we knew Owen was in the best hands and that we knew that he would not do anything that he did not think was the absolute best decision for Owen at that time,” Tayler Monroe said. “Just living everyday life with your child that you were very, very close to losing is miraculous.”

The new valves have aged well, as Owen has grown since the successful operation, but what may be even grander is what the surgeon said could be coming in the future.

“Opens up these new doors to be able to say, well, what about taking that old heart? Because we know the valves are usually pretty good. That’s called a domino,” Turek said.

The domino effect is a result of the initial operation. By not discarding the entire old heart, two lives or more can be saved. Knowing their family is a part of the greater equation makes this momma feel good. 

“When you don’t know if you’re going to take your child home from the hospital and you’ve had previous conversations about planning a funeral with them, playing on the floor on a random weekday afternoon or a weekend afternoon is a blessing. Truly,” Tayler Monroe said. “Any moment we get with him is special.”