On the surface, Megan Schoepfer appears to be an average 13-year-old girl. She swims for the West Howard Swim Club and is getting ready to begin high school at Mount Airy Christian Academy.

She has two younger siblings, 8-year-old sister, Morgan, and 10-year-old brother, Matthew, and two loving parents, Robert and Donna. And she loves sports. Beneath her skin though, Megan is no average 13-year-old. Where the average person's blood zigs, Megan's zags.

"The right side of (her) heart was too small to allow adequate flow through the tricuspid (entry) valve on the right side. (She) also had a VSD (ventrical septal defect) -- a hole between the two pumping chambers. As a result, the VSD was closed and flow from (her) upper body was diverted directly into the lung blood vessels without having to go through the heart, an operation called a Glenn procedure," explained Megan's doctor, Joel Brenner, in an e-mail.

In layman's terms, Megan, who was born with a congenital heart defect, had the tubes attached to her heart rerouted.

"At the top it flows by momentum, and the bottom it's pumped," her mother says. "She can't stand on her head for a long time."

After the initial surgery, fluid developed around Megan's lungs and she spent her first birthday in the hospital. She obviously doesn't remember it, but has seen videos of herself at the time.

"It's scary seeing myself with all those tubes," she says.

Thanks to medical science, Megan now lives a wholly normal childhood, aside from taking one baby aspirin a day to thin her blood and going in for a yearly check up.

Megan is able to sustain a healthy dosage of sports including basketball (her Mount Airy Christian Academy middle school team won the league championship this year), volleyball, soccer and field hockey.

"I'm going to start lacrosse and softball (soon)," adds Megan, who likes to read books about sports when she's not competing.

"She likes to stack the sports, she says 'I can do two or three at a time' ," says Donna, horrified by the logistics.

This summer, Megan joined the West Howard Wahoos swim team for the first time. At first she could barely make it across the pool. Now she can do every stroke and improved her times at every meet, culminating with the season-ending novice meet, where she posted her best performance of the season. She was twice named Wahoos Swimmer of the Week.

"I didn't know anything at all when I first started, now I know strokes, turns, starts," Megan said. "I really like (swimming) ... you get to compete against yourself and others."

The only limitation is that Megan has to be careful not to overexert herself and strain her heart.

"All her coaches know that she can only do what she can do, and she has to tell them when she has to stop. She just can't push herself too much, but she does," Donna Schoepfer said.

For a time, Megan's doctors thought they might try to reverse her Glenn procedure, so that her blood flowed the usual route now that her heart is getting big enough to handle it. But they eventually decided against it.

"There hopefully will be no further surgeries, her heart function should continue to be good, and there hopefully will be no heart rhythm disturbance," Dr. Brenner wrote.

"They said as long as she's doing well this way and she's functioning, there's no sense in setting her back, because it will for months, if she has another heart surgery," Donna said.

With the fall sports season approaching, Megan has no time for the sidelines.

user comments (1)

user stevec says...

Dr. Brenner's description of Megan's heart defect sounds a lot like Tricuspid Atresia, the defect I was born with! I also had the Glenn Procedure (in 1967!) am I now 41 years old! With good medical care, there is no reason Megan can't live a long, happy life.

But the key element is GOOD MEDICAL CARE! While a heart defect can be repaired, it can never be cured. Exercise and stay fit (Megan is doing a GREAT job already!), take care of yourself, and make sure to see your Cardiologist as instructed!

Posted 9:36 PM, 08.13.08

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