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Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009

Triplet Tales: Thanks to surgeries, love, boy's heart still keeps rhythm

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With his brother Frank paying no mind, Gabriel Sanchez quietly steps onto the fireplace hearth behind him and leaps upon his back.

Frank barely reacts. And why should he? It's sort of like a house cat pouncing on a lion. It's typical little-brother stuff.

Well, yes and no.

Gabe certainly is the little brother in the sense that he stands 4-foot-3 and weighs 54 pounds, while Frank is 5-8 and about 180 pounds. But in age, Frank has him beat by only a matter of minutes. Gabe, Frank and their brother, Israel, are triplets, born Nov. 5, 1996.

Frank is a fraternal triplet, clearly taking after his father, Frank Sr., a bear of a construction worker with the grip to show it. Gabe and Israel -- or Izzy, as he's called -- are identical. But even between those two, there's a huge difference: Gabe was born with Shone's complex, a series of congenital anomalies in his heart. The defects include a hole in the wall that separates the heart's left and right sides, constriction of the aorta and stenosis of the aortic and mitral valves. (Izzy also was born with a hole within his heart, but it closed on its own within his first year.)

Gabe had his first surgery at 2½ weeks old, and it's hard for his dad and mom, Veronica, to keep track of what all he's gone through. He's had 10 or 11 surgeries, they say, and is on his fourth or fifth pacemaker. He was on heart and lung transplant lists until "the guy upstairs" intervened and those organs improved, Frank Sr. says. As babies, he and Izzy suffered seizures that doctors believed would lead to cerebral palsy or other neurological disorders, says Veronica, who works as a medical assistant and is full-time student in respiratory therapy. At 4, he nearly died of pneumonia.

So accustomed is the Modesto boy to hearing about his roster of health problems, he can nonchalantly say things like, "I almost died four times" and "There was a doctor who wanted to pull the plug on me."

But other than his relatively small stature for a 12-year-old, his cold handshake because of circulation problems and -- when he lifts his T-shirt, a long chest-to-abdomen scar, there's nothing that immediately suggests Gabe is anything but a typical, happy boy.

He's in fifth grade at Sipherd Elementary. (His brothers are sixth-graders at Glick Middle School. Gabe was held back because the medications he's taken over the years have resulted in ADHD and mild dyslexia, his parents say.)

He enjoys playing "Rock Band" and other video games with Izzy, Frank and, sometimes, Mom and Dad. He's got a grin that just won't quit. He's taken karate lessons. He played on baseball and basketball teams until his teammates got big enough that even the minimal "contact sport" elements of those games proved too hazardous to the pacemaker implanted in his abdomen.

Still, boys will be boys, and Frank Sr. and Veronica are hard-pressed to keep their triplets from roughhousing. "They'll try to double up on me," Frank Jr. says good-naturedly about his brothers. "They hit me and I can't hit them back."

That's because if he even taps them, they go flying, their mom says. "But these guys try to hit him so hard and he's not even budging."

Gabe loves to do things he shouldn't, like wrestling and climbing fences, Veronica says. "And then he gets hurt. And then he doesn't say anything because he doesn't want us to worry or to get upset that he was doing something he wasn't supposed to."

Last summer, Gabe's horizons broadened when he attended Camp Taylor in Livermore and for the first time got to know other kids with heart conditions. The annual free camp includes activities such as archery, a climbing wall, a rope challenge course, heart education classes, crafts, themed events and campfires. It is named for 15-year-old Taylor Gamino of Salida, who was born with hypoplastic right heart syndrome -- or half a heart -- and in his first five years of life survived four surgeries and a stroke.