Infant Is Stable After Receiving a New Heart

A Marine Corps major who chose to join his battalion in the Middle East while his ailing son awaited a heart donor in Loma Linda learned Thursday morning that his infant boy was in stable condition after a heart transplant.

Four-month-old Dillon Sellers, son of Maj. Hal Sellers and his wife, Betsy, of Twentynine Palms, was in critical condition Thursday but recovering after a four-hour operation overnight at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Doctors declined to identify the heart donor.

Betsy Sellers was notified Wednesday afternoon that a heart had been located, and she e-mailed the news to her husband, stationed in Kuwait. A few minutes after the surgery ended about 1 a.m. Thursday, Sellers called his wife for an update. She told him that the operation had been successful and that Dillon had regained a healthy glow.

“His circulation immediately improved,” a tired Betsy Sellers said in a telephone interview from her home Thursday. “He had pink, warm feet for the first time ever.”

Betsy Sellers said her husband seemed worried, repeatedly asking her whether there had been any complications. But she told him that surgeons assured her the operation “went like clockwork.”

“He was very relieved,” she said.

Dillon was born Oct. 19. Ten days later, doctors diagnosed him with hypoplastic left heart syndrome: His heart was underdeveloped and unable to pump enough blood. His only hope for survival was a transplant.

Commanders at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms gave Sellers the option of joining his troops -- the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion -- in the Middle East or staying on base to work behind a desk.

After agonizing over the decision, Sellers chose to join the troops he had helped train since July.

The battalion of 700 Marines was deployed Feb. 21. Sellers is the battalion’s executive officer, and thus second in command. He told his wife he worried that his absence would weaken the battalion.

Now that Sellers is in Kuwait, a Marine spokesman said, it is unlikely he will be allowed to return to California any time soon.

Dillon was at the top of the hospital’s transplant list, but his condition was worsening by the day, according to hospital officials.

Betsy Sellers said medical center personnel called her at 1:15 p.m. Wednesday with the news about the donor heart. She said she was so excited and nervous that she had to hand the phone to a friend. Her first thought, she said, was, “Gosh, I wish Hal was here.”

After arranging to have a fellow Marine wife take care of her other two boys, Alex, 8, and Erik, 6, Betsy Sellers began the 1 1/2-hour drive from Twentynine Palms to the medical center. Dillon was readied for surgery, and about 9 p.m., the heart arrived. By 1 a.m., the infant had a new heart.

Betsy Sellers said she will not be able to hold her son for nearly four weeks because of the tubes and lines that connect him to a ventilator. She said she will know the ordeal is over when she gets him home and can wrap her arms around him.

Lead surgeon Anees Razzouk said the heart came just in time for Dillon, whose condition was grave. “We were concerned that a new heart would not be enough,” he said. “He was literally on his last breath.”

On Monday, Razzouk said, the infant stopped breathing twice and needed to be resuscitated to stay alive. But in the first 15 hours after the transplant, Dillon’s heart has been pumping in good rhythm, the doctor said.

“Now that he has a good heart going, his chances [of survival], God willing, are 80% to 90%; whereas before he had no chance,” Razzouk said. “The outlook is promising.”