'Miracle' -- teen's heart, stopped for 4 days, beats again
Pastor Dale Morgan
'Miracle' -- teen's heart, stopped for 4 days, beats again*
POSTED: 1439 GMT (2239 HKT), February 12, 2007
Story Highlights
• Boy, 17, collapses after jogging in gym class
• Teen found to have heart defect
• Heart stops as boy waits for transplant on bypass machine
• Heart begins beating again on its own; "it's a miracle," doctor says
NEW YORK (AP) -- Daniel Walker was on his final lap jogging in his high
school gym class when he collapsed, his flawed heart giving out on him.
More than four days later, his heart at a standstill, kept alive by a
bypass machine, it began beating again. The 17-year-old's parents called
it divine intervention. His physicians were no less amazed.
"I've been a surgeon for 10 years, and this is probably one of the most
incredible things I've ever seen," said Dr. Abeel Mangi, one of Walker's
cardiac surgeons at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia.
Walker's father described his son's recovery in spiritual terms. "God
turned around, put His hand on my son, and recharged him," said William
Walker, 58, a retired sanitation worker.
His son's ordeal began January 19 when he collapsed in gym class. The
younger Walker suffered from a rare congenital heart flaw that left his
coronary artery pinched, giving him only 10 percent of normal heart
capacity. He was shuttled to two hospitals before finding himself at
Columbia, waiting for a heart transplant, attached to the bypass machine.
Walker's cardiac surgeons said they could not account for the young
man's recovery.
"It's a miracle," Mangi said. "There's really no other way to put it."
Two days after it began to beat on its own, surgeons were able to fix
the flaw in Walker's heart, increasing its capacity to 60 percent.