On his first birthday, Michael was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a condition that would affect his movement and posture.

By the time he turned 8, the problem with his heart had progressed to the point where he would be out of breath from just walking across the living room. Pam had been told when Michael was an infant that he would one day need open-heart surgery to replace his aortic valve. Now she knew that that day was going to be soon.

"Michael was pretty scared," Pam says. "He talked about his upcoming surgery for weeks."

Michael's pediatrician referred him to Geisinger's Janet Weis Children's Hospital for his surgery. It was there that he met Kamal Pourmoghadam, MD, Director of Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery.

Dr. Pourmoghadam knew Michael was nervous and tried to calm some of his fears by playing and joking with him. He gave Michael a surgical mask of his own to help alleviate his fear of the masks before going in to surgery and he explained that surgery was necessary to fully correct the problems Michael was experiencing with his heart.

"The angioplasty Michael had as an infant bought him time," explains Dr. Pourmoghadam.  "When the patient is bigger, you have more treatment options. You can replace the valve completely and have better results."

Michael's operation would take more than seven hours. He was connected to a heart-lung machine, and his aortic valve was replaced with a prosthetic valve large enough to allow for growth.

"At nine years old, Michael is still growing, so we made sure the replacement valve we used was large enough so that he doesn't need to undergo the procedure again just because he outgrew the valve," Dr. Pourmoghadam says.

Pam said she prepared for the worst before going in to see Michael after his surgery, but to her surprise, he looked good, she says. "It still was hard to see him like that -- hooked up to tubes and monitors -- but I was expecting a lot worse."

Michael and his heart would face more challenges before he left the hospital, however. A week after the surgery, he would need a pacemaker inserted to help control the electrical impulses of his heart. Excess fluid had built up around his heart as well and would need to be drained. Fortunately, he did well with both procedures, and as his condition improved, he was able to be up and out of bed.

Pam especially remembers the first time Michael was able to go downstairs in the hospital. "He didn't want me to leave him to go to the cafeteria, so Dr. P said, 'if you let your mom go eat, I'll let you go with her.'" Michael eagerly agreed and found a number of things to enjoy outside of his hospital room. He especially enjoyed the toy train that travels the lobby's perimeter and the interactive turtles that shoot water into a fountain.

"Michael is a real trooper," Dr. Pourmoghadam says. "He's a very strong kid -- and with the support of his family, he did very well."

"He's been through a lot," Pam says, "but he's just like everyone else and can do everything that anyone else can do."

Now, Michael is an independent youngster who craves doing things himself. Though he is not allowed to participate in contact sports, he stays active by playing with his older brother, Melvin, and even has his own football jersey for the team Melvin plays on. He also has formed a unique bond with his grandparents. They, too, have had open-heart surgery, and because all three of them have the same type of scar on their chests from surgery, they welcomed Michael into the "zipper club."

Through everything, it was a plus that Michael liked "Dr. P," Pam says. "He wasn't just Michael's doctor. He really cared about Michael as a person, too."

Michael now follows-up with a pediatric cardiologist at Janet Weis Children's Hospital Pediatric Specialty Services Clinic, located in DuBois Regional Medical Center's Medical Arts Building, to make sure there are no recurring problems. So far, he is doing well, Pam says. She adds that it can be difficult to find the balance between being cautious with Michael and letting him live his life and says she tends to be more watchful when he has a cold or other mild illness. As a mother, it can be hard to look at the situation from a medical point of view, she says.

"I'll always be concerned," she says, "but I put it in God's hands. Only He can give me the comfort to live with it every day."