Something the Lord Made DVD

The other night Mike and I watched an incredible movie called "Something the Lord Made." It's on DVD and available for rent at any video store. We actually bought it off of Amazon because this is one that we want to own.

The story is a TRUE story of the first pediatric cardiac heart surgery that was performed and how the DR's came upon discovering how to save all of these heart defect "blue" babies. The story is about Vivan Thomas (played by Mos Def), who is a young African American who is brilliant and wants to become a DR, but really has no chance of ever becoming one especially in America in the 1930's. The other DR is Dr. Blalock (played by Alan Ricken) who is a DR specializing in surgery. The third DR is Dr. Taussig (played by Mary Stuart Masterson) who is studying really sick "blue" babies. All of her babies were receiving absolutely no help because the belief was that there was nothing they could do to help these babies. So she teamed up with Dr. Blalock to help these infants have a chance at survival. Thus, they created the Blalock-Taussig Shunt (B/T Shunt) which is the method and device that saved many babies lives.

What's so moving to us about this is that that was what Brynlyn's first heart surgery was. It was her first repair using the B/T Shunt. She had the shunt inside of her for almost a year before her 2nd heart surgery when they replaced the shunt with the conduit artery. So basically these 3 people who are typified in the movie are the ones resposible for saving Brynlyn's life.

It's a really incredible, well-done movie. If you watch it, let me know what you think.