Parents' Nightmare -- Awaiting Heart Transplants for Newborn Twins

April 7, 2006 — -- Nicole and Michael Draper always loved the idea of a big family. They started seven years ago with the arrival of their daughter Caitlin. Twins Emma and Brendan arrived in 2001.

In early 2005, with another pregnancy under way, the Phoenix couple received more good news at the doctor's office. They were expecting another set of twins.

A month later, doctors spotted trouble in a routine ultrasound: a condition called dilated cardiomyopathy, meaning a heart too weak to do its job. The condition is rarely diagnosed in utero, and it is rarer still for each twin to have it.

"The fact that both of them had it was just amazing to them [the doctors] as well as to us. The word that the cardiologist used was 'unfathomable.' He said, 'It is unfathomable that both of these babies have this condition,'" Nicole Draper said.

Her pregnancy became an escalating medical suspense, peaking on the day she delivered. As her husband, Michael, described it, "Everybody was tense. Everybody. There were eight or nine people in there."

In front of a crowd of anxious doctors, Nick and Nathan Draper came into the world on the morning of July 11, 2005. They were immediately rushed to intensive care and within hours the boys were on 10 different medications.

Soon after the twins were born, complications mounted.

They were moved by ambulance to Phoenix Children's Hospital where heart specialists advised having the boys flown to the University of California in Los Angeles, the closest place with the expertise to keep them alive.

"It was terrifying to receive the news that they had done so poorly in that first 24 hours," Nicole said.

When they arrived in Los Angeles, they were greeted with even worse news from doctors.

The Drapers were told that both babies needed heart transplants within three months to six months -- and that the wait for scarcely available infant hearts could often be longer.

"It was devastating to me," Nicole said. "We just kept hearing so much negative information."