WEBVTT

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What is this right here?

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The term congenital heart defect was

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something that had never entered my

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vocabulary.

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We were scared.

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We had never heard of congenital

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heart defect.

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Some of my earliest memories are

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being a guinea pig in doctor's

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offices.

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My first open heart surgery was

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in nineteen seventy-one.

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It was just about a month

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before my first birthday.

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Tucker has hypoplastic left heart syndrome

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and what that means is the

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entire left side of his heart

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didn't develop.

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I see myself back on an

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operating table having my chest cut

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open and hoping that they don't

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slice through scar tissue and kill

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me.

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The heart defect that I have

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lends itself to a person needing

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a transplant after a certain amount

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of time.

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We can actually take a piece

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of ordinary skin from your arm

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and we can convert that into

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pluripotent stem cells, which means that

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they have the ability to then

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form new heart muscle.

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Thank you.