Paul Jilesen sleeps cradled in his father’s arms blissfully unaware of the national stir his young life has created.
He and his family are used to the media glare by now – the three-month-old has been in the spotlight almost from the moment of his conception. Paul is a normal bouncing baby boy but at 20 weeks, while still in his mother’s womb, doctors were fearing for his very existence and telling his parents to “terminate” the tiny baby.
For the Jilesens there was “no question,” about ignoring the initial advice to have an abortion and opting for an extremely rare operation known as a pleuro-amniotic shunt. “Even if they said nothing could have been done I would have carried him,” says Carol. “Termination was never even thought of,” echoes her husband Leo.
Paul’s problem first became apparent to doctors 20 weeks into the pregnancy when a build-up of fluid in his chest threatened his tiny heart and lungs. Using ultra-sound to guide him, Dr. Robert Morrow, perinatologist at Mount Sinai Hospital, inserted a tiny shunt through the mother’s womb and into Paul’s chest. Once it was successfully lodged there, the fluid was able to leave his body for the duration of the pregnancy.
The operation was on February 12 and Paul was born June 3 by caesarean section. When he was delivered, doctors were surprised to discover the shunt was gone.
“He had pulled it out the day before he was born,” says Carol. “It was the best thing that could have happened.”
The operation, which Carol was awake for, took only about 20 minutes, but its impact will be far-reaching in the Canadian medical community. Never before in this country have doctors attempted to insert a shunt at such an early stage. At the time, Paul was only four inches long and the medical team had to avoid hitting his tiny organs and blood vessels with the shunt.
Now, except for a small scar on his chest which will remind him of his early brush with death, Paul is perfectly normal.
“Everything is there,” says Leo, his father. “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s as healthy as anything.”
Corrective surgery before birth is a relatively new procedure pioneered by pediatric surgeon Michael Harrison in the early 1980s. Doctors have found the earlier the stage of development the better the chance of complete healing after surgery.
Paul came home from hospital after five days to join his brother and two sisters on the family dairy farm near Lindsay, Ontario. The closest community, Omemee, has a population of about 45. This is Jilesen country with members of the family dotting the community. Paul is one of 40 grandchildren.
“At first most of the neighbors didn’t know about it (the operation),” says Leo. But with the newspapers and TV cameras came local publicity. Like any other proud parents, Leo and Carol show snapshots of their baby. The only difference is these photos were taken by the ultrasound when he was 20 weeks old and his life hung in the balance.
