LAYTON, Utah (AP) - Like other high school football coaches, Dru Jones is getting ready for the grind of another football season. When Memorial Day weekend concludes, his schedule will become dominated by 7-on-7s, scrimmages, camps and everything else a head coach does to prepare his team for the fall.
Jones’ schedule will be different in one way, however.
On June 23, the last day of a camp with Judge Memorial and Ogden at Ogden High, Jones - who is entering his second year as the head football coach at Layton Christian Academy - will go to Primary Children’s Hospital for a doctor’s appointment that could involve the replacement of his pacemaker.
He’s had a pacemaker for seven years and the battery is starting to run low.
Jones needs the pacemaker because of a heart defect called transposition of the great arteries (TGA). TGA is a congenital defect where the pulmonary artery and the aorta are attached to the wrong ventricles.
In a normal heart, the pulmonary artery is attached to the right ventricle, allowing de-oxygenated (blue) blood to enter the lungs, and the aorta is attached to the left ventricle, allowing oxygenated (red) blood to disperse throughout the body.
In people with TGA, the pulmonary artery and aorta are attached to the opposite ventricles.
This means de-oxygenated blood entering the heart disperses back out to the body through the aorta without ever going to the lungs for oxygenation, while oxygenated blood entering the heart goes back into the lungs without getting dispersed throughout the body.
According to Stanford Children’s Health, TGA happens “during the first eight weeks of fetal development,” and mostly “occurs by chance, with no clear reason for its development.”
About 1,250 babies in the United States are born each year (1 in 3,300) with TGA, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The defect causes a condition called cyanosis, a bluish discoloration of the skin and mucous membranes, and is fatal without surgery.
Almost immediately after Jones was born - on Dec. 10, 1983, at Ogden Regional Medical Center - he was taken by helicopter to Primary Children’s for open-heart surgery. Jones said he was pronounced dead while in the helicopter, but that he was brought back to life.
He still goes to Primary Children’s because that’s where all his doctors are.
In order for Jones to survive after birth, doctors completed the “Mustard Procedure” on him. The procedure doesn’t involve attaching the two arteries to the correct ventricle, but instead redirects the blood.
As a result of the procedure, de-oxygenated blood is sent to the lungs through the pulmonary artery attached to the left ventricle while oxygenated blood is sent through the aorta attached to the right ventricle.
Although the procedure saved his life, Jones always knew it wouldn’t be a long-term solution. When he was a child, he could feel how the condition was presenting challenges.
“It was always awkward when (I was) 8 or 9 or 10 years old and mom has to come down and say, ’Now if his lips turn (blue).,” Jones said. “I’d always have to tell my little league coaches.”
Jones tried to do everything other children did, and he’s grateful his mother allowed him the freedom, though he noted how carefully she watched over him. He played baseball, basketball, soccer and football.
He played football at Syracuse Junior High and went on to play at Northridge High. He was a junior and a senior in 2000 and 2001 when the Knights won the first two of their three straight state championships under Fred Fernandes.
Jones said he weighed 90 pounds as a senior and clearly wasn’t as able as the other athletes, but he still managed to get varsity playing time at cornerback.
Seven years ago, while he was a sophomore football coach at Syracuse High, Jones’s heart finally started to give up.
“I hit a wall,” Jones said. “My feet would go numb, I was losing oxygen, I had a hard time walking to the practice field.”
Jones had a pacemaker implanted. He said he was told it would last five years, but it’s lasted seven. Now it’s finally time for a replacement.
The pacemaker has allowed Jones to do everything he wants, but he acknowledges it’s not something he can rely on forever. His heart continues to deteriorate, and his pacemaker is having to do more and more work to compensate.
Jones goes in for checkups every 90 days and said one of the tests he takes tells him how much work his pacemaker has to do each day. He said he’s been told it’s at 75 percent.
“It’s a number you don’t want to hear,” Jones said. “As a person, you always want to know your own heart is working, and so when a doctor tells you it increased maybe 1 or 2 percent . it’s a gut-wrenching thing.”
Eventually, the pacemaker will have to provide so much work that Jones will need a heart transplant.
He admits he hasn’t inquired how much work his pacemaker will have to do before the transplant is necessary.
“I’m very competitive, and so I’ve always thought I’ll beat this condition,” Jones said. “When somebody has a disease, they want to beat that disease, and I’ve always said I’ll beat it. So I never ask. I always tell them, ’What is it I can do better?’”
Still, he realizes the apparent inevitability based on facts and what his doctors tell him.
“You don’t want to believe it, but eventually it’s going to happen, and I’ve got to realize it’s OK to do that,” Jones said.
Even though he has a pacemaker, he said he still has days where he is more tired than others. But instead of loathing in self-pity, he wakes up every day grateful to be alive and be realizing his dream of being a high school football coach.
He job-shadowed Fernandes when he was in junior high and said one of the main reasons he was so persistent about playing football as a kid was so that he could one day be a coach.
“I knew I was going to coach from day one,” Jones said. “I wanted to coach. I started making playbooks when I was 5 years old.”
As a head coach, Russ Jones worked with Dru Jones as his assistant for 12 years at Woods Cross and Syracuse. The recently retired coach said it was easy to tell how much Dru loved the game.
“The kids sense whether you care about the game or if you’re just trying to put in the time,” Russ Jones said. “The kids really rallied around Dru, not just because they liked him, but because they knew he was there for them.”
___
Information from: Standard-Examiner, https://www.standard.net
Please read our comment policy before commenting.