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Copyright 2004 The News-Messenger (Fremont, OH)
All Rights Reserved
The News-Messenger (Fremont, OH)
January 14, 2004 Wednesday
Mother fights for son's life as genetic heart condition terrorizes herself
and her family
By SARAH WILLIAMS
Staff writer
Juanita Mendoza has already lost eight siblings, a nephew and two of her five
children to the genetic heart condition that wracks her own body with pain
everyday.
Now, all she wants is to see that her 13-year-old son, Eleazar Mendoza, gets
a heart transplant - a heart transplant that will relieve him from the fear of
an early death and give him the kind of life he hasn't had since he was 7.
"He's 13 - he's got his whole life ahead of him," Juanita said, giving her
son a gentle smile. " ... I just want to stay alive long enough to make sure he
is going to have life. I'm tired of fighting myself and I'm not getting any
younger.
"I want to be around at least long enough to teach him how to take his
medicine and how to take care of himself - to eat healthily and exercise. I want
him to have a good life, a long life, and to have no children. I told them all
to adopt. I'll love 'em just as much."
Juanita and Eleazar have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy - HCM - a genetic heart condition that results in a thickening of the heart muscle, according to the HCMAssociation. The condition can cause shortness of breath, chest pain, heart palpitations, lightheadedness, blackouts or sudden death.
An estimated 300,000 people have HCM in the United States. There is no cure,
and symptoms of the condition can begin at any time in a person's life. It is
unclear what causes the onset of symptoms.
Juanita said that of her 12 siblings, four are left living. Of those four,
two don't have the condition and neither do their children or grandchildren.
Those who have already died didn't make it past the age of 30.
Along with her daughter Tarina, Juanita lost her son, Cresensio Mendoza in
2001. He was 15-years-old. And after Cresensio died, she and her husband were
legally separated.
"When we lost our son, the life came out of him," Juanita said. "He changed."
Juanita's other two children, Ramiro Garza, 26, and Rebecca Neal, 24, both
live in the state of Kansas and have the condition. Juanita said Rebecca isn't
doing well right now - and she too, lost a son, Angel, to HCM.
Juanita explored a heart transplant herself, but she was told that in order
for it to work properly she would likely need both a heart and lung transplant.
"He was afraid that if he got me on the table, I would die," she said of her
doctor.
To put the strain HCM puts on the heart in perspective, the average adult
heart rate is about 72 beats per minute. The danger zone - when a defibrillator
will often activate - is about 200 to 230 beats per minute. Juanita said her
heart was palpitating at about 300 beats per minute when she got "the call" and
rushed her daughter Tarina Roberts to the hospital several years ago for a heart
transplant.
Juanita collapsed and had to be treated herself at the Columbus hospital upon
arrival. Years later, in 1999, Tarina died at the age of 25 after her body
rejected the heart.
Eleazar and Juanita both experience fatigue, shortness of breath and intense
palpitations. Both of their hearts have been fitted with a pace maker - a device
attached to the heart designed to keep it beating steadily - and a
defibrillator. A defibrillator electrically shocks a person's heart to get its
rhythm back on track when it palpitates.
Juanita said that if she's sitting when her defibrillator shocks her, it
"throws her into a standing position," and then she must be rushed to the
hospital to be checked out. The 48-year-old has been to the hospital hundreds of
times in cardiac arrest - yes, hundreds. Each time, the doctors electrically
shock her heart back on track.
In 1992 - the year she got her pacemaker and defibrillator - Juanita
estimates she was to the hospital and shocked more than 100 times that year
alone. While being interviewed Friday, she said she was actually in heart
failure, but she's just used to it.
"You can be fine and happy one minute and the next you're in the hospital
dying," she said, solemnly. "There are times I've been to the hospital three,
four times a week. They say they put you to sleep, but 300 Volts is something
you don't forget."
Eleazar sees Dr. Blane Grubb at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo and
must go to the Cleveland Clinic each month for check-ups. Dr. Alvin Jackson,
Eleazar's local doctor at Community Health Services, said one of the greatest
concerns of HCM is the increased risk for sudden death.
"It's an unpredictable situation, and that brings a lot of uncertainty to
life where they really re-assess everyday," Jackson said. "There is a lot of
fear on the part of family members and the kids themselves. The kids can become
depressed. They can't do the normal physical activities other kids do.
"When something like this happens in childhood, it can really change their
perception of what childhood is. We think of childhood as a carefree time of
innocence and discovery, and they run, jump and have a good time.
"That's compromised in these children."
Aside from serving as Eleazar's doctor, Jackson said he also knows Juanita
and Eleazar on a personal level.
"They're a very courageous family," Jackson said. "Mrs. Mendoza has given all
that any mother could give. ... I just know the struggles she goes through, all
that has happened, and yet she sees so much of the beauty in life.
"She's a wonderful lady."
Juanita would like to see Eleazar avoid some of the pain she has experienced.
She keeps a close eye on him, making sure he takes his medicine and doesn't do
anything to strain himself. Juanita has home-schooled Eleazar off and on for
much of his life, keeping him home for his entire fifth- and sixth-grade years.
Because he begged and begged, she finally let her son go back to school in
seventh grade.
Eleazar can't walk fast enough or expend the energy to get to class on time,
so he's transported through the halls of the Fremont Middle School in a
wheelchair. He sleeps a lot - like his mother - and just wishes that someday, he
'll be able to go for walks or skateboard, like his friends.
Juanita holds a beeper that will go off when a heart for transplant is
available for Eleazar - and their rush to the hospital will begin. She thinks
she'll literally have a heart attack when it activates.
" ... It scares me some of the time," the soft-spoken Eleazar said of living
with his condition. "When (the beeper) goes off, I will probably be crying the
whole time. But I'll finally get to do the things my friends do and not sit and
watch."
Someday, his mother said, Eleazar would love to direct movies. The two smiled
and joked about how often the teen, shyly hiding under the hood of his red
SpongeBob sweatshirt, watches the flick "Dumb and Dumber." But when his mother
told him he should make a movie about his life, he glanced skyward and pressed a
finger to his lips, "Shhhhhh."
Eleazar hasn't been without his own trips to the hospital. Most recently, in
July of 2002 he was raced by Life Flight Medical Helicopter from Memorial
Hospital to the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo. And on New Year's Eve 2002,
Eleazar was rushed to the hospital from an overnighter at the Sandusky County
YMCA, his heart malfunctioning on both sides.
The pair, who live alone and get by on welfare and Medicaid, have been told
it could be anywhere between now and five years before the beeper goes off. And
until it does, Eleazar and Juanita plan to do their best to survive.
"A lot of people have told me I'm a strong woman, but I don't think so,"
Juanita said. "I just have a lot of friends. My children all keep me going. I
want to make sure he's going to be all right.
"If I get sick and go, I want to make sure he has a better life."
Contact staff writer Sarah Williams at 419-334-1051 or
[email protected].
JUANITA MENDOZA holds a picture of her son, Cresensio, who died at the age of
15 in 2001 from the same heart condition that requires her other son, Eleazar,
left, to have a heart transplant in order to survive.
News-Messenger/David Distelhorst
LOAD-DATE: January 15, 2004
2 of 2 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 2004 The News-Messenger (Fremont, OH)
All Rights Reserved
The News-Messenger (Fremont, OH)
January 14, 2004 Wednesday
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 6A
LENGTH: 223 words
HEADLINE: How to help
BYLINE: Staff, Staff
BODY:
A benefit dance will be held for 13-year-old Eleazar Mendoza from 8 p.m. to
midnight Saturday at the Sandusky County Fairgrounds. Music will be provided by
Amanda Reyna y Sus Reyes, and cost is $7 per person or $12 per couple.
Mendoza has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy - HCM - a genetic heart condition
that results in a thickening of the heart muscle, according to the HCM
Association. The condition can cause shortness of breath, chest pain, heart
palpitations, lightheadedness, blackouts or sudden death.
If Eleazar doesn't regularly attend his monthly check-ups at the Cleveland
Clinic, he could be taken off of the list for a heart transplant. At any given
time, the teen's beeper could go off, telling him he must rush to the hospital
for the transplant.
Eleazar's mother, Juanita Mendoza, is hoping the benefit will raise about
$1,000, so that she might be able to eat, pay for a hotel room and buy gasoline
for these trips. A friend has agreed to drive or loan her car to Juanita, but
the tires are bald. She hopes to fit the car with replacement tires as well.
Medicaid should cover the cost of the $300,000 transplant, Juanita said.
To make a monetary donation, make checks to: Rosa Scherer, P.O. Box 165,
Fremont, OH 43420.
Scherer is a friend of the family and can provide a receipt upon request.
All Rights Reserved
The News-Messenger (Fremont, OH)
January 14, 2004 Wednesday
Mother fights for son's life as genetic heart condition terrorizes herself
and her family
By SARAH WILLIAMS
Staff writer
Juanita Mendoza has already lost eight siblings, a nephew and two of her five
children to the genetic heart condition that wracks her own body with pain
everyday.
Now, all she wants is to see that her 13-year-old son, Eleazar Mendoza, gets
a heart transplant - a heart transplant that will relieve him from the fear of
an early death and give him the kind of life he hasn't had since he was 7.
"He's 13 - he's got his whole life ahead of him," Juanita said, giving her
son a gentle smile. " ... I just want to stay alive long enough to make sure he
is going to have life. I'm tired of fighting myself and I'm not getting any
younger.
"I want to be around at least long enough to teach him how to take his
medicine and how to take care of himself - to eat healthily and exercise. I want
him to have a good life, a long life, and to have no children. I told them all
to adopt. I'll love 'em just as much."
Juanita and Eleazar have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy - HCM - a genetic heart condition that results in a thickening of the heart muscle, according to the HCMAssociation. The condition can cause shortness of breath, chest pain, heart palpitations, lightheadedness, blackouts or sudden death.
An estimated 300,000 people have HCM in the United States. There is no cure,
and symptoms of the condition can begin at any time in a person's life. It is
unclear what causes the onset of symptoms.
Juanita said that of her 12 siblings, four are left living. Of those four,
two don't have the condition and neither do their children or grandchildren.
Those who have already died didn't make it past the age of 30.
Along with her daughter Tarina, Juanita lost her son, Cresensio Mendoza in
2001. He was 15-years-old. And after Cresensio died, she and her husband were
legally separated.
"When we lost our son, the life came out of him," Juanita said. "He changed."
Juanita's other two children, Ramiro Garza, 26, and Rebecca Neal, 24, both
live in the state of Kansas and have the condition. Juanita said Rebecca isn't
doing well right now - and she too, lost a son, Angel, to HCM.
Juanita explored a heart transplant herself, but she was told that in order
for it to work properly she would likely need both a heart and lung transplant.
"He was afraid that if he got me on the table, I would die," she said of her
doctor.
To put the strain HCM puts on the heart in perspective, the average adult
heart rate is about 72 beats per minute. The danger zone - when a defibrillator
will often activate - is about 200 to 230 beats per minute. Juanita said her
heart was palpitating at about 300 beats per minute when she got "the call" and
rushed her daughter Tarina Roberts to the hospital several years ago for a heart
transplant.
Juanita collapsed and had to be treated herself at the Columbus hospital upon
arrival. Years later, in 1999, Tarina died at the age of 25 after her body
rejected the heart.
Eleazar and Juanita both experience fatigue, shortness of breath and intense
palpitations. Both of their hearts have been fitted with a pace maker - a device
attached to the heart designed to keep it beating steadily - and a
defibrillator. A defibrillator electrically shocks a person's heart to get its
rhythm back on track when it palpitates.
Juanita said that if she's sitting when her defibrillator shocks her, it
"throws her into a standing position," and then she must be rushed to the
hospital to be checked out. The 48-year-old has been to the hospital hundreds of
times in cardiac arrest - yes, hundreds. Each time, the doctors electrically
shock her heart back on track.
In 1992 - the year she got her pacemaker and defibrillator - Juanita
estimates she was to the hospital and shocked more than 100 times that year
alone. While being interviewed Friday, she said she was actually in heart
failure, but she's just used to it.
"You can be fine and happy one minute and the next you're in the hospital
dying," she said, solemnly. "There are times I've been to the hospital three,
four times a week. They say they put you to sleep, but 300 Volts is something
you don't forget."
Eleazar sees Dr. Blane Grubb at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo and
must go to the Cleveland Clinic each month for check-ups. Dr. Alvin Jackson,
Eleazar's local doctor at Community Health Services, said one of the greatest
concerns of HCM is the increased risk for sudden death.
"It's an unpredictable situation, and that brings a lot of uncertainty to
life where they really re-assess everyday," Jackson said. "There is a lot of
fear on the part of family members and the kids themselves. The kids can become
depressed. They can't do the normal physical activities other kids do.
"When something like this happens in childhood, it can really change their
perception of what childhood is. We think of childhood as a carefree time of
innocence and discovery, and they run, jump and have a good time.
"That's compromised in these children."
Aside from serving as Eleazar's doctor, Jackson said he also knows Juanita
and Eleazar on a personal level.
"They're a very courageous family," Jackson said. "Mrs. Mendoza has given all
that any mother could give. ... I just know the struggles she goes through, all
that has happened, and yet she sees so much of the beauty in life.
"She's a wonderful lady."
Juanita would like to see Eleazar avoid some of the pain she has experienced.
She keeps a close eye on him, making sure he takes his medicine and doesn't do
anything to strain himself. Juanita has home-schooled Eleazar off and on for
much of his life, keeping him home for his entire fifth- and sixth-grade years.
Because he begged and begged, she finally let her son go back to school in
seventh grade.
Eleazar can't walk fast enough or expend the energy to get to class on time,
so he's transported through the halls of the Fremont Middle School in a
wheelchair. He sleeps a lot - like his mother - and just wishes that someday, he
'll be able to go for walks or skateboard, like his friends.
Juanita holds a beeper that will go off when a heart for transplant is
available for Eleazar - and their rush to the hospital will begin. She thinks
she'll literally have a heart attack when it activates.
" ... It scares me some of the time," the soft-spoken Eleazar said of living
with his condition. "When (the beeper) goes off, I will probably be crying the
whole time. But I'll finally get to do the things my friends do and not sit and
watch."
Someday, his mother said, Eleazar would love to direct movies. The two smiled
and joked about how often the teen, shyly hiding under the hood of his red
SpongeBob sweatshirt, watches the flick "Dumb and Dumber." But when his mother
told him he should make a movie about his life, he glanced skyward and pressed a
finger to his lips, "Shhhhhh."
Eleazar hasn't been without his own trips to the hospital. Most recently, in
July of 2002 he was raced by Life Flight Medical Helicopter from Memorial
Hospital to the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo. And on New Year's Eve 2002,
Eleazar was rushed to the hospital from an overnighter at the Sandusky County
YMCA, his heart malfunctioning on both sides.
The pair, who live alone and get by on welfare and Medicaid, have been told
it could be anywhere between now and five years before the beeper goes off. And
until it does, Eleazar and Juanita plan to do their best to survive.
"A lot of people have told me I'm a strong woman, but I don't think so,"
Juanita said. "I just have a lot of friends. My children all keep me going. I
want to make sure he's going to be all right.
"If I get sick and go, I want to make sure he has a better life."
Contact staff writer Sarah Williams at 419-334-1051 or
[email protected].
JUANITA MENDOZA holds a picture of her son, Cresensio, who died at the age of
15 in 2001 from the same heart condition that requires her other son, Eleazar,
left, to have a heart transplant in order to survive.
News-Messenger/David Distelhorst
LOAD-DATE: January 15, 2004
2 of 2 DOCUMENTS
Copyright 2004 The News-Messenger (Fremont, OH)
All Rights Reserved
The News-Messenger (Fremont, OH)
January 14, 2004 Wednesday
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 6A
LENGTH: 223 words
HEADLINE: How to help
BYLINE: Staff, Staff
BODY:
A benefit dance will be held for 13-year-old Eleazar Mendoza from 8 p.m. to
midnight Saturday at the Sandusky County Fairgrounds. Music will be provided by
Amanda Reyna y Sus Reyes, and cost is $7 per person or $12 per couple.
Mendoza has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy - HCM - a genetic heart condition
that results in a thickening of the heart muscle, according to the HCM
Association. The condition can cause shortness of breath, chest pain, heart
palpitations, lightheadedness, blackouts or sudden death.
If Eleazar doesn't regularly attend his monthly check-ups at the Cleveland
Clinic, he could be taken off of the list for a heart transplant. At any given
time, the teen's beeper could go off, telling him he must rush to the hospital
for the transplant.
Eleazar's mother, Juanita Mendoza, is hoping the benefit will raise about
$1,000, so that she might be able to eat, pay for a hotel room and buy gasoline
for these trips. A friend has agreed to drive or loan her car to Juanita, but
the tires are bald. She hopes to fit the car with replacement tires as well.
Medicaid should cover the cost of the $300,000 transplant, Juanita said.
To make a monetary donation, make checks to: Rosa Scherer, P.O. Box 165,
Fremont, OH 43420.
Scherer is a friend of the family and can provide a receipt upon request.