Lane is a typical two-year old living in Lexington, NC. He loves tractors, trucks, gardening and making people smile and laugh. “Lane is perfectly normal until he takes off his shirt,” says his mother, Morgan Prince. Scars from his heart surgeries tell the story of his and his family’s experience with heart disease.

Lane was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, a form of congenital heart disease in which the left side of the heart does not develop fully. He underwent his first surgery, the Norwood Procedure, at only five days old. After the surgery, he remained at Duke University Medical Center for a month. “He was also on a heart monitor after we were finally able to bring our son home,” says Morgan. “I finally began to relax more about his heart condition when I got more comfortable with taking his feeding tube out and putting one back in at home.”

He had his second heart surgery at four months old. The Bi-Glenn Procedure was also performed at Duke University Medical Center. “Every time we go back to Duke, it is like a home away from home. I consider the doctors and nurses there a part of my family,” says Morgan. After returning home two weeks after the surgery, he had to return to Brenner Children’s Hospital to help to regulate his heart medicine. “After the surgery, I was gone for five months for basic training for the Army National Guard,” says Brad Prince, Lane’s father. “It was very hard just thinking that any complications in Lane’s health could come up while I was away from my family.”

At almost two, nothing holds Lane back. He can do what all the other kids do. “He gets tired a lot easier, but he will sit down, take a breath and then get right back up and continue what he was doing,” says Lane’s mom.

Lane has one more heart surgery ahead of him when he turns three and he outgrows the shunt that he currently has in place.