As she waited in the lobby at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, Bella Sanchez’s heart was pounding.
She was moments away from reuniting with the surgeon who gave her that healthy heartbeat.
“Right there, is that him?” she asked her mother.
“There he is, right there,” her mother, Melissa Sanchez Vann responded.
Then, without hesitation, Bella took off in a sprint to give Dr. James Quintessenza a hug.
“It just came over me. I was going to wait until he got a little closer but I just couldn’t help myself,” she said.
The Lakeland 12-year old said she has dreamed of reuniting with Dr. Q, as he is known, since she was 7 years old.
“I would not be alive at this exact moment if it wasn’t for you,” she read to him from a handwritten note. “I know deep in my heart that you were there for me.”
When her mother was 20 weeks pregnant, an ultrasound found Bella had a rare congenital heart disease, known as “Holmes Heart.”
“Basically, you have two pumping chambers normally in a heart and she only has one functioning pumping chamber,” said Dr. Quintessenza.
Over the course of three open-heart surgeries before Bella turned 3 years old, Dr. Quintessenza “rearranged her plumbing,” as he puts it, to allow for one pumping chamber to do the work of two.
In his three-decade long career caring for thousands of patients, Dr. Quintessenza said he has operated on approximately 10 patients with Holmes Heart.
“If we did not do the surgeries, she couldn’t live,” said Dr. Quintessenza.
It’s a fact that Bella has lived with her whole life and why she so badly wanted to meet her surgeon.
On Wednesday, she was not only reunited with him, but others from the cardiac ICU team who helped with her operations and recovery.
“I’m going, Oh my God, look at her life, look at the quality of her life, what she’s able to do. It’s just phenomenal,” said Dr. Quintessenza. “It’s wonderful right? I wouldn’t trade my job with anybody’s.”
While Bella may have been too young to remember her doctor, her mother, Melissa Sanchez Vann definitely does.
Wednesday’s reunion took her right back to those terrifying days sitting in the waiting room.
“Handing her over to a surgeon is never easy but Dr. Q. has a calm about him, a reassurance about him that he will take the best care of your child that he can and he did and we are very blessed and thankful,” she said.
Follow-up appointments have shown Bella is in good health.
Her doctors encourage her to stay active and continue playing volleyball and swimming, which she loves.
She also loves art and gave an original piece to Dr. Q, who says he will hang it in his office.
“How was it looking at him?” asked the media.
“Amazing. I just felt like I knew him in my heart when I first saw him,” said Bella Sanchez.