This year’s Christmas a healthier, happier one for boy with heart transplant

By Jamie Durant
Morning News Health/Environmental Reporter
Published: December 27, 2008

FLORENCE — Joseph Greenwood was the picture of health this holiday season as he sat in his kitchen decorating Christmas cookies with his mother, Angela, and sister, Abby.

Previous Christmases have not been so calm, because Joseph was under the care of many doctors for dilated cardiomyopathy, a rare weakening of the heart muscles.

The condition, which led to a heart transplant, all started with a high fever.

“He was in 4K, and he got a fever that lasted nine days,” Angela said. “I had been taking him to the doctor, but on the 10th day he got better.”

She said the next few months were a flurry of doctors visits as Joseph began having unexplained fainting spells.

“We thought he was getting better last Christmas, but around January and February, he started doing worse,” she said. “On March 24, he collapsed on the back porch and Stephen (Joseph’s father) gave him CPR.”

Angela said that’s when Joseph was flown to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, where he was the first child in South Carolina to receive the Berlin Heart Pump, an artificial heart designed to allow more time to find a human heart donor.

Joseph got his new heart April 13, 2007. Since that day, it has allowed him to be just another second-grader at Carver Elementary School in Florence.

“His energy level is off the charts,” Angela said. “He is the first one to wake up every morning and the last one to want to go to bed every night.”

She said every day holds potential for new experiences for her family.

“He just learned to ride his bike without training wheels,” she said.

Joseph also is becoming an accomplished prankster. One of his favorite tricks to play on his mom is to pretend to faint whenever he gets really excited. He demonstrated his technique, with his eyes rolling back in his head, never missing a beat while decorating gingerbread men with plaid shirts and rosy cheeks.

“I’m always like ‘That’s not funny anymore!’” Angela said of his recent “fainting” spells.

She said she recently saw a news article about the child of an NFL player who has the exact same disease as Joseph had, and it brought back memories of the pain and worry she felt for her child.

“(Childhood heart disease) made news once again, and I just can’t help but think it could hurry things along for approvals for other kids’ heart problems,” Angela said.

She said she feels for that family and what they are going through, but at the same time, she hopes they can use their celebrity to bring attention to the issue of juvenile heart problems.

“Most kids don’t have heart problems,” she said. “I understand the numbers, but it’s frustrating when your child is the one who needs the help.”

She said Joseph is continuing to follow doctors’ orders, even though the orders are less about medicine and more about being a happy, healthy boy.

“Doctors have told us the more exercise he gets, the better, because the heart is a muscle,” she said.

And Joseph always follows his doctors’ orders.