When Kapa’a High School junior Sheilyn K. Abalos again makes the trip to the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, Calif. next month, it unfortunately won’t be to explore the possibilities of attending that prestigious college. It will be for
When Kapa’a High School junior Sheilyn K. Abalos again makes the trip to the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, Calif. next month, it unfortunately won’t be to explore the possibilities of attending that prestigious college.
It will be for the sixth – and hopefully final – open-heart surgery of her 16-year life.
Born with a large hole in her heart and narrow valves and arteries that mandated her first open-heart surgery when she was just one month old, doctors at Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women & Children back then didn’t give the infant Sheilyn much of a chance of celebrating her first birthday, said her mother, Rose Abalos of Kilauea.
The congenital defect was discovered when she was born at Wilcox Memorial Hospital, and she was only a few hours old when she had to be rushed via air ambulance to Kapi’olani, where she remained for the first several months of her life.
Her list of open-heart surgeries includes the one just after birth, to open a heart valve, a second one at Kapi’olani, and surgeries three through five at Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital on the Stanford campus.
The fifth procedure closed the hole in the heart, but a sixth is needed now to replace a valve.
On heart medication all her life and also requiring numerous heart catheterizations, the young girl’s body suffers from narrow arteries and vessels that restrict the blood flow and cause her chest pains and other discomfort, and a heart that leaks blood.
Without the sixth surgery, which she and her family are praying will be the last, her condition will worsen, Rose Abalos said.
The family still has bills from the last trips to California for surgeries and treatment, and Medicaid pays for some of the costs, her mother said. But she is not sure what Medicaid will cover, since the procedures happened in another state.
The family has set up a fund and is asking businesses and the island community to help with her medical expenses. Donations can be sent to Friends of Sheilyn Abalos, P.O. Box 811, Kilauea, HI 96754-0811, or dropped off at any American Savings Bank location.
Sheilyn Abalos, the third of four daughters of Alvin and Rose Abalos of Kilauea, has missed a lot of school, is exempt from participating in physical education classes at Kapa’a High School because of her condition, and has been working with special education teachers at her school.
She breaks into tears when she discusses missing out on playing soccer like her sisters do, and basically wanting to be a regular teenager.
“I want to stay in school,” she said, shaking her head when asked if she has a boyfriend. She is too busy with homework to have a boyfriend, and would rather spend time with her family, she said.
Her father owns and operates a house-cleaning business, and her mother had worked at Princeville Foodland until she had to quit to devote her attention to her ill daughter.
Sheilyn’s older sisters are Leolani and Alisha, and her younger sister, who is nearly the same height as Sheilyn, is Gwendolyn.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
