Michelle Evans is talking about her baby, the one born with the flawed heart and the hole in his scalp. Surgery to fix his heart could have caused massive brain bleeding, but scalp surgery was sure to stress his heart.
“That’s when they diagnosed him with a 5 percent chance to survive,” Evans says, sitting in the living room of her family’s Lancaster home.
The brown-eyed whirlwind that is Talan Evans stops playing his drum—a gift from his grandfather—long enough to show that he is paying attention.
“Yay! I survived!” he says.
“Yes, you did survive,” says his mother.
At nearly 7 years old, Talan Evans is all boy, a “crazy little man,” says his mom. He loves his dogs, Max and Mason, and his guinea pig, G-Force. He swims. He goes to the mountains with his family. He can’t wait to go hunting someday with his dad, Shane Evans. He adores his sisters, Hanna, 13, and Alyssa, 16. He won’t let his parents forget that he really, really, really wants that stuffed dog he saw in a hospital gift shop.
To know that he’s here right now and such a crazy little boy is such a miracle.
The name Talan means “fighter,” and behind the façade of this perfectly normal, adorable little boy is a superhero. He was born in 2006 at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center (pennstatehershey.org) with a serious heart imperfection called tetralogy of Fallot, and with cutis aplasia, the lack of skin and bone over part of the brain. His first scalp surgery was at three days old. The heart procedure, originally slated for three phases, was condensed to one in emergency surgery when his oxygen levels plummeted at 13 days.
“To know that he’s here right now and such a crazy little boy is such a miracle,” says his mom. “It really is. We feel like every day is a gift.”
The support of family, friends, and Penn State Hershey’s Children’s Miracle Network—“our family outside of our family,” says Evans—helped his parents endure. He’ll need a heart valve replacement when he’s 9, and his allergy to dairy and soy requires a belly tube for occasional feedings and a special drink for most of his nutrition. Still, “he’s so much fun, and people can’t believe he was such a sick little boy.”
“My husband and I said this kind of thing either makes you or it breaks you, and we decided it’s going to make us, and it was going to define our family,” says Evans. “And Talan is our testimony. We just love sharing our story.”
There was never any thought of sending Talan elsewhere for treatment, says Dr. Donald Mackay, the Penn State Hershey chief of plastic surgery who repaired Talan’s scalp. Mackay trusted fully that the work of heart surgeon Dr. Jack Myers would end in “the best possible outcome. We’ve got the backup of a team that is really spectacular. You just know that there’s nowhere else he’s going to get anything better.”
Talan and his “two fantastic parents” are inspiring, Mackay says. “This little kid has an incredible fighting spirit. He’s an amazing kid.”
Before Talan, Michelle Evans never gave much thought to the impact of her checkout-counter dollar donations to Children’s Miracle Network. But CMN donated the ventilator that kept her baby alive. They took her son to a Hershey Bears game. They bring families together for holiday parties. CMN also funds research, such as Mackay’s work in bone graft surgeries for skull reconstruction.
“Your child could be in an accident or diagnosed with something, and you’re going to need Hershey, so CMN then takes a whole new role in your life,” says Evans. “They will never let a child be left behind.”
Talan’s experience opened Evans’ eyes to all the families whose pregnancies don’t go as planned.
“You get pregnant, you go to the hospital, you have your baby, you bring your baby home,” she says. “You learn that it’s not like that for everybody. It’s something I’m guilty of, too. I had two perfectly healthy daughters.”
Talan, the future firefighter now flying a toy lifeline helicopter through the living room, interjects.
“I’m healthy.”
“You are healthy now,” his mom concurs. Talan, she says, “has taught us what it means to truly embrace life. This kid is so free-spirited. He just loves life.”
In those first weeks, the family didn’t take things a day at a time but an hour at a time. Now, with their little miracle intact through the work of the Penn State Hershey team, the Evans family doesn’t ask why they were visited with this trial. It’s a blessing to share her son’s story, says his mom.
“He is a gift, and we’re lucky. We wouldn’t have it any other way. For him, we would, so he wouldn’t have to go through it. But we wouldn’t change a thing about Talan.”
