Cord Lehman thought he was just attending a press conference at the Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park on Thursday to talk about the rare heart defect he was born with and the recent treatment he underwent to avoid open-heart surgery.
Instead, the 17-year-old Syosset native and avid New York Islanders fan met a Hockey Hall of Famer.
Lehman was surprised near the end of a media session with a visit from Pat LaFontaine, who presented him with an autographed stick and wristband emblazoned with the word “courage.”
“It was definitely a surprise,” he said.
Lehman was born with a heart defect known as Tetralogy of Fallot, which changes the normal blood flow through the heart. Cohen Children’s Medical Center officials said the condition affects five out of 10,000 babies.
Lehman’s condition stemmed from pulmonary stenosis, which narrows the pulmonary valve and the passage of blood from the heart’s right ventricle to the pulmonary artery.
“I had a fever during the delivery and as a precaution they tested to see if the fever passed on to cord,” said Lehman’s mother, Randi.
“We were very lucky that the cardiac fellow was working with another baby next to Cord, and he cleaned the doppler and put it on Cord and that’s how they found out,” she continued. “They found out he had a heart defect within an hour of his being born.”
To combat the condition, doctors at Cohen Children’s Medical Center performed a surgery days after Lehman was born to help bring oxygenated blood to his lungs, and he was operated on a few months later to further treat the condition.
“Our job as a group really is to keep surgery as less frequent an option for patients like Cord,” said Vincent Parnell, Cohen’s chief of pediatric cardiac surgery who performed both procedures when Lehman was a baby. “Fortunately cord hasn’t required my services for a little while and we’re going to try to keep it that way for a good while.”
It would be 13 years before Lehman would return to Cohen for another surgery to correct the condition, undergoing a non-invasive procedure for the implementation of a melody valve on May 27 that would create an artificial pulmonary valve to free blood flow.
The procedure was conducted by Dr. Dipak Kholwadwala, an interventional cardiologist who has performed the procedure 15 times at Cohen in three years.
A few hours after the procedure, Lehman was sitting upright in bed and chatting with friends and family, updating them on his condition via Twitter and Facebook.
“It was a team effort at this hospital, and the doctors here are just great. They’re miracle workers, they work as a team,” said Lehman’s father, Bob. “I just encourage other parents who have children in similar situations that this is the place to go.”
The next day, Lehman left the hospital and returned home, preparing for his upcoming high school graduation and watching the New York Rangers take on the Montreal Canadiens in the National Hockey League’s Eastern Conference Final round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“Today, I feel great,” he said. “I’m back to being myself, and that’s what I wanted to be.”
“I’m extremely relieved I won’t have to go through open heart surgery, hopefully for the rest of my life, but at least for awhile,” he said. “It allows me to be exactly who I want to be, and that’s me. That’s all I want to be, just me.”
LaFontaine, who chatted with Lehman and his family after the press conference, said he first learned of Lehman’s story last week through his Champions of Courage Foundation, which works to connect hospitalized children throughout the United States and Canada to their hockey heroes.
“I was very impressed at the courage he’s shown, going through the surgery and knowing that it was very rare,” said LaFontaine, who played in the NHL for 15 seasons with the Islanders, Rangers and Buffalo Sabres.
“They asked, since we have a connection here with the Lion’s Den as part of the Champions of Courage, if I wanted to present him with a hockey stick, and I said I would be happy to, because of all the courage he’s shown,” LaFontaine said. “He’s a real inspiration to other kids.”
Lehman said he knew of LaFontaine but did not initially recognize him as he stepped from behind a row of television cameras to hand him an autographed hockey stick.
Lehman said he plans to attend Hofstra University in the fall to study broadcast communication, with the hope of one day becoming a hockey announcer.
“I never had any doubt that this procedure could be done,” Lehman said. “I never doubted it one single bit.”
