Heart Recipient

Travis Martin

Twenty-three medals from tae kwon do tournaments, along with trophies from soccer, baseball and basketball, line the shelves of Travis’s bedroom. This from a kid who was too weak to roll from his tummy to his back at 5 months old.

Doctors diagnosed him with a congenital heart defect at 2 months and told his parents his best hope was a transplant. At the time Travis' father was between jobs, which cost the family more than $500 a month for COBRA insurance premiums. Though she wasn't working when he was diagnosed, Dawn, his mother, found that she had to return to work to meet the family's financial needs. Dawn would leave the hospital to go to job interviews, eventually finding one in the nursery of a daycare center.

"I’d work with healthy infants all day and then cry all the way to the hospital that evening," Dawn said. "It was so difficult because I’d be there at work listening to mothers complaining about their sons’ ear infections. Those kids could take antibiotics, but a simple dose of antibiotics wouldn’t help my son."

Travis remained in the hospital almost exclusively from the time he was diagnosed until he received his heart transplant at 5 months. Two weeks later he was on his way home with his family. According to his mother, the kid started rolling around like crazy and hasn’t stopped moving ever since.

"We look at him and think, he’s not even supposed to be alive," his mother said. "Yet here he is jumping and running and kicking. You’d never dream he’d had a heart transplant."

Dawn and her husband were warned by the doctors that a rejection episode was likely to occur in the first 6 months, so they watched and waited. Travis has no doubt suffered his share of cuts and bruises like all active little boys. But as far as his heart’s concerned, he’s seen the inside of a hospital room only once — that was two years post-transplant for a routine catheterization.

An exceptionally active child, he started studying tae kwon do at age 5. A natural athlete, he will soon qualify for a second-degree black belt. He should have qualified last March, but he was too busy with baseball to find the time to take the test.

Along with his daily athletic routine comes a ritual of a different kind — medicine twice a day, every day, without fail. This means cyclosporine twice a day and Imuran at night.

"He knows how important it is," Dawn said. "He’s fully aware that it’s what keeps him alive. And he won’t let me forget it," she added, with good humor.

“Once my mom went out before giving me my evening medicine," said Travis. "I waited in my room until I heard the car pull up then I raced downstairs and said, 'Mom! You need to give me my medicine!'"

In her "spare" time (she has two other children, Grant, 7 and Amber, 3) Dawn is a member of the executive board for a nonprofit group called Transplants for Children. The group provides crisis funding for families facing or undergoing transplant. The group also offers workshops for the patient’s siblings, so that brothers and sisters know what to expect. Dawn also speaks at public events for the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance and works in hospitals to educate ICU and ER nurses about organ procurement. Travis accompanied her to her most recent speaking engagement.

Travis is also an educator among his peers. Travis’s third-grade teacher asked each student to write about the best gift they had ever received. For Travis, the answer was easy: his transplant. His story was read aloud to the entire class, and his teacher asked him to share it with another class, and that class shared his entry with the principal.

Although Travis enjoyed a bit of celebrity thanks to his journal, most of the kids think nothing of his transplant. It’s easy to forget because he’s such an incredibly athletic kid. But occasionally, the story pops up.

"One of the other kid's dads was watching me play baseball one time," said Travis. "I was playing first base and shortstop, and I was all over the place. He came up to me later and said that he'd heard that I'd had a heart transplant and he wanted my autograph! That was pretty cool."