Big Hearts Give Joyously
The Wenzler Family Endowment for Pediatric Cardiology will help ensure children and families have access to expert, compassionate heart care for generations to come.
For the first few years of her life, June Wenzler and her family navigated a complex medical journey that stretched from rural New York to some of the region's leading pediatric heart specialists.
“Around her first birthday, Annie and I discovered that our daughter, June, had supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), which results in episodes of unsafe rapid heartbeat, and an atrial septal defect (ASD), where holes in the wall between the top two chambers of her heart were causing inefficiencies,” says Fritz Wenzler.
“SVT and ASD are common congenital heart conditions, but I don’t have many patients with both,” says Jonathan Flyer, MD, Golisano Children’s Hospital’s chief of pediatric cardiology. “I met June when she was fifteen months old, following the discovery of a murmur by her excellent pediatrician, Patricia Monroe, MD, of Adirondack Health. An ASD at fifteen months is not life threatening and standard practice is to safely delay surgical repair until later in childhood.” But June soon developed arrhythmia. Action had to be taken.
“We tried several medications and then enlisted Boston Children’s Hospital’s electrophysiology team—specialists in pediatric arrhythmias,” says Dr. Flyer. “None of the medications worked.”
Winter descended and the situation intensified. “The Wenzlers live in rural New York,” says Dr. Flyer, “so with every arrhythmia episode, the family would drive long distances on rural roads, sometimes at night, sometimes in snowstorms, to get June to the closest emergency department at Adirondack Medical Center. Although not pediatric experts, their teams provided great care, working with Dr. Monroe, and supported by our UVM Health pediatric cardiology service and Boston Children’s.”
June’s was one of the most complex SVT cases of Dr. Flyer’s career. “I felt my job was not only to understand the anatomy and physiology, but to understand the Wenzler family, what they were living through and the contributing risk of their rural geography.”
It’s been my honor, privilege and pleasure to help bring Fritz and Annie a network of expertise—from the Adirondacks to Burlington to Boston—in a way that benefited their daughter and their family.
Dr. Flyer and the Boston team agreed that the arrhythmia was coming from the top chambers of June’s heart, and probably further complicated by the large holes between the chambers. In more typical cases, the Boston team would wait until June was older and perform open-heart surgery to close them. “I was keenly aware of the risk of waiting and how much that risk was increasing every time I spoke to the family,” says Dr. Flyer, who believed the next step should be an ablation to pinpoint the arrhythmia and eliminate it, even though ablation at her age diverged from normative procedure.
“I felt strongly that I needed to advocate for the Wenzler family and help our cardiology teams at UVM, Dartmouth, and Boston—our northern New England regional resources for complex pediatric cardiovascular cases—understand and agree upon the risk of waiting longer, even though it was unfamiliar and uncommon.”
Pediatric cardiology colleagues across New England’s congenital cardiac centers were supportive and collaborative. Boston Children’s performed the ablation and although risk factors precluded them from eliminating the arrhythmia, they were able to more accurately determine its type and therefore find a more suitable medication. “We were thrilled to see June’s improvement,” says Dr. Flyer. “It was now time to close the holes in her heart, so I then advocated for early cardiac surgery.” At the delicate age of three, June underwent open-heart surgery at Boston Children’s.
“Today, two years later, the combination of new meds and heart surgeries have enabled our daughter to thrive,” says her father. “Because of Dr. Flyer’s advocacy and understanding of rural health care, June was able to get in quickly for procedures at Boston Children’s, continue her care closer to home, and cease her monthly visits to our local ER. He created a plan for our daughter’s best care while taking our whole family into account.”
Appreciative of Dr. Flyer’s care, advocacy and coordination with Adirondack Health’s Dr. Monroe and Boston Children’s Drs. Dionne, O’Leary and Kwon, the Wenzlers established the Wenzler Family Endowment for Pediatric Cardiology at Golisano Children’s Hospital. “We want the level of care we received from Dr. Flyer and his team to continue to grow and directly benefit future patients and families.”
“We’re a small academic pediatric cardiology division,” says Flyer. “No one has ever made an endowed gift—let alone one of this magnitude—to our division. The fact that the Wenzlers acknowledged our work and put an enduring value on it… I have no words for that level of gratitude. It’s been my honor, privilege and pleasure to help bring Fritz and Annie a network of expertise—from the Adirondacks to Burlington to Boston—in a way that benefited their daughter and their family,” says Dr. Flyer.
To explore how your gift could change the course of children’s lives, contact Shelby McGarry, Shelby.McGarry@uvmhealth.org, or 802-999-8688.
