For Baby Jackson: A homerun against insurmountable odds

By Joyce Coronel

Andy and Elyse Lane had barely moved into their south Tempe home when they discovered they were expecting a baby. Fourteen weeks into the pregnancy, they learned Elyse was carrying a boy. Andy, a former Major League coach for the Chicago Cubs, and Elyse, an occupational therapist, shared the happy news with friends and family. When a routine ultrasound exam a few weeks later revealed their son had a devastating heart defect, the young couple was stunned. “We actually didn’t even try to talk about it for a week,” Elyse said. The doctor told them the baby was missing the pulmonary valve of his heart. Not only that, but his pulmonary artery was 10 times larger than normal — so massive that it was endangering his airway. “We asked him the hard question: if it was your daughter, 27 years old, sitting here with her first baby, what would you say?,” Elyse recalled of the meeting. “He said he had like an 87 percent chance of not living until birth and then only a three percent chance that he would come home breathing on his own.” The doctor recommended they terminate the pregnancy. Sitting in their living room looking through photos of Jackson’s birth four months later, it seemed a surreal statement. “He was also our biggest advocate,” Andy was quick to point out about the doctor. “He was the one who got us to go to Boston,” Elyse added. It was in Boston that the couple met with a physician who diagnosed their son’s extremely rare condition: tetralogy of Fallot, a heart defect. Jeff Lane, Andy’s father, recalled hearing the news about Jackson’s diagnosis. “As soon as they heard this diagnosis, we found out that most people give up. They terminate. And they were never willing to quit,” Jeff said. “We are so proud of our son and daughter-in-law. They were never going to take no for answer. They are both athletes and very competitive people. They said, ‘We are going to fight though this and we are going to make it.”

“It took an hour and a half for them to do an MRI on me,” Elyse said of the visit to Boston. The baby was so active it was difficult to perform the test. “They said, he’s so active that it’s a positive. So we left there being a little more relieved,” Elyse said. While in Boston, the Lanes learned of Dr. Frank Hanley, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif. “When we went and met with Hanley he said…worst case scenario, he could be here up to a year. We didn’t know what would happen,” Elyse said. Hanley also told them the most important thing was that Elyse try to make it to full term. At 36 weeks, however, she went into labor and delivered the baby. There were 13 doctors in the room when 6 pound, 5 ounce Jackson entered the world, unable to breathe on his own. Jackson’s condition was so serious that he was put on life support. At just five days old, he underwent a 13-hour operation to repair his heart. For five weeks, Andy and Elyse never left the hospital. They stayed up with him until 1 or 2 in the morning and were up again for rounds early the next morning to hear what the doctors had to say. Jackson seemed to respond to hearing Andy’s voice. “Nobody in the hospital could believe how quickly he recovered,” Elyse said.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, they brought their baby home to Tempe. “Faith got us through it. I didn’t ever doubt that he was going to be fine,” Andy said. “The doctors looked at us, like, why are you two always so optimistic? It’s because we didn’t know any better and we figured, hey, he’s going to come out and live. Both of us are really driven people.” Sitting in his baseball-shaped chair, surrounded by MLB jerseys presented to him by Giants and Royals players, Jackson coos with delight as older brother Jake, 2, bestows a kiss. The couple is thankful for all the support — both financial and emotional — that they received from MLB friends throughout their journey with Jackson. They plan to take him to upcoming spring training games, starting with the Diamondbacks. “Two big-name players came when he was born,” Jeff said. A Kansas City Royals player came on the morning of game five of the World Series and brought a hat and jersey for Jackson. One of the Giants players had already brought a jersey to the hospital. The couple told doctors to share information about what happened to Jackson with others whose child has a similar condition. “We want to give people hope, because we had three months of no hope when we were pregnant,” Elyse said. “I’ve got two baseball players right here,” Andy said, holding tiny Jackson as Jake looked on. The four-inch “baseball scar” on Jackson’s chest, a lifesaving zig-zag that can’t help but evoke visions of the stitching on its namesake, will always be a reminder of the lifesaving surgery Andy’s son endured. Doctors say Jackson will have no restrictions on activity, and although he will need the pulmonary valve replaced from time to time over the years, he’ll be able to do all the things other children do. “When the doctor told me there wouldn’t have to be any restrictions, that’s when it kind of changed the tides I think,” Andy said. “I always had a good feeling about it.” As for the incredible odds that Jackson beat with his amazing recovery, Elyse thinks her son ultimately could have the same kind of charmed life that led her husband to a career with the Cubs. If Andy could make it, why couldn’t Jackson. After all, she said: “What are the chances of someone making it to the MLB, right?”