Parents’ Special Delivery : Transplant Patient Is Finally Home, 5 Months After Birth

An early Christmas present arrived special delivery Tuesday: Charles and Renee Shinn brought their son home, five months after he was born with a defective heart.

“It’s just the ultimate gift . . . the gift of life for our child,” Renee Shinn said as she held Robbie, who had a heart transplant 12 days after he was born. “How could we ask for anything else?”

Clad in blue jeans and a T-shirt declaring “I have a heart--donate!” Robbie was greeted in Midway City by a crowd of friends and relatives, a flurry of brightly colored balloons, a specially decorated cake and a personalized “Welcome Home” banner. Blue ribbons adorned the trees of his neighborhood, symbolizing--as they have since the summer--support for the child’s fight for life.

After showing off Robbie’s scar to reporters, the Shinns ushered the little boy into the nursery. “He’s never even been in his crib,” Renee Shinn said, happily depositing Robbie onto the quilt covered with red, yellow, blue and green dinosaurs.

Since the transplant July 10, Robbie’s parents and his 10-year-old brother Vincent have lived in a rented apartment near the Loma Linda University Medical Center. Finally back home, the family is looking forward to finding a routine outside of doctors, hospitals and medication.

“We just want to go for walks around the neighborhood, be with our friends, all the things we (had) planned to do when we brought him home from the hospital,” said Charles Shinn, a Westminster police officer. “We’re finally back to being a normal family again.”

Robbie was born June 28 with a congenital heart defect that afflicts more than 700 babies a year. His rare B-positive blood type made finding a donor more difficult, and on July 10 doctors gave the child less than 48 hours to live.

But that day, a donor emerged and Robbie was whisked via helicopter to Loma Linda, where the world’s first successful infant heart transplant took place in 1985.

Robbie was released from the hospital Aug. 11, but a month later was readmitted because of a serious rejection episode that lasted two weeks. He was back in the hospital briefly in October for another rejection but has been healthy since, according to Dr. Richard Chinnock, medical director of the pediatric heart transplant program at Loma Linda.

“We’re not quite ready to say everything’s hunky dory (but) he’s looking so good these days, it’s really exciting,” Chinnock said. “In the last couple months some switches turned on and he’s just much brighter and perkier and more interactive with other people and his environment. I’m feeling much better about him.”

“He’s starting to act like a baby a little bit too,” agreed Robbie’s dad. “He’s starting to coo now, starting to play with toys and to grab things. He’s becoming more of a little person.”

Robbie will still visit Loma Linda monthly, and he will have quarterly checkups and be on immuno-suppressing medication for his entire life. Physical therapy in the coming months should help him catch up on motor skills, but he could suffer permanent damage from the early-childhood trauma.

Now that the baby’s health is stabilized, the Shinns look back on his illness not as a tragedy, but as a blessing.

“I wouldn’t want this to happen to anyone, but it did happen to us and it’s brought a lot of awareness and the love of a lot of people,” Renee Shinn said.

Westminster police officers turned $15,000 worth of vacation and overtime into cash to help finance the family’s stay in Loma Linda, and the public donated $10,000 more. Renee Shinn has written more than 200 thank-you notes for toys, cards and contributions, and just before Thanksgiving, the couple sent a four-page letter to the most important giver, the parents of the heart donor.

Now, the couple plan to devote time to promoting awareness of transplants and encouraging people to donate organs.

“It can either tear you apart or bring you together and it’s brought us together,” she said. “It’s nice to be a normal family again, be home, start the routine. We just want to get back to a normal life.”