‘Jarren is my hero’: Coach’s son inspires many
Jarren Jasper marks one-year anniversary of day his life forever changed
Jarren Jasper is a typical teenager in this day and age. He’s obsessed with playing the “Fortnite” video game, sleeps late during summer vacation and causes a kerfuffle at home by accidentally taking his older brother’s headphones.
Jarren is getting ready to begin his sophomore year at Broadneck High School and is already working as a manager for the football program.
Such seemingly routine acts of daily life are pure joy to Ivin and Donna Jasper because just one year ago there was a chance their youngest child would never do any of those things again.
At this time last year, Jarren was fighting for his life after a relatively lowrisk procedure. While undergoing an operation to correct an abnormal heart rhythm, he went into cardiac arrest and almost died.
It was Aug. 4, 2017 — the day life changed dramatically for the entire Jasper family.
Donna was sitting in the waiting room at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., with her daughter, Dallas, when a nurse came out of the operating room and uttered the unforgettable phrase: “Things aren’t going as planned.”
The nurse explained the cardiac ablation procedure was not working on one side and therefore doctors needed to try the other side. Donna was stunned and immediately called her husband, a longtime Navy Season opener Sept. 1, 11 p.m. TV: CBS Sports Network
football assistant coach.
“I was in panic mode and called Ivin screaming,” Donna said.
Ivin and Donna had been assured by doctors that a cardiac ablation procedure had a very high success rate and that complications were extremely rare. So Ivin went to work that day since Navy football had begun preseason practice.
At exactly 11:01 in the morning, Ivin sent Jarren a text message: “Don’t be afraid son. You’ll be fine.”
“I’m not,” Jarren replied. Ivin then sent Jarren the thumbs up emoji.
One year later, Ivin still has that text message exchange saved on his cellphone.
Jasper, the longtime offensive coordinator for Navy football, was sitting in a staff meeting on the third floor of Ricketts Hall when he received the panicked call from his wife.
“I was going over the practice script when Donna called and said, ‘You have to come here right way. Something went wrong.’ I just sprinted out of the building,” Ivin recalled.
Ivin arrived at Children’s National Medical Center and was dumbfounded when told by his wife that Jarren’s heart had stopped during the procedure. Moments later, a nurse came into the waiting room and said the medical staff was doing everything it could for him.
“Doing everything you can? What do you mean? Are you kidding me?” Ivin remembers saying.
Now distraught himself, Ivin called Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo in tears.
“I called Coach Niumat and said, ‘They’re acting like they might lose my son!’ It was absolutely surreal,” Ivin said.
‘Out of left field’
Jarren seemed like a perfectly healthy teenager on July 27, 2017, when he went for a routine physical required to play football as a freshman at Broadneck High.
He had been a standout running back for the Cape St. Claire Cougars through multiple weight classes and age groups. He has been described by coaches as a talented runner with good speed and agility, dynamic enough to be moved to quarterback as an eighth-grader with the Varsity-U squad.
Dallas Jasper took her younger brother to the physical and was stunned when the doctor found a problem.
“Dallas called and told me that Jarren had failed his physical. She said the doctor didn’t like the sound of his heartbeat,” Ivin recalled.
Jarren was taken to see a heart specialist and was diagnosed with accelerated idioventricular rhythm. A stress test showed his heart rate was irregular when he was at rest, but returned to normal rhythm whenever he exerted.
“Jarren had been playing football for eight years and passed his physical with flying colors every summer before practice began,” Donna said. “So this completely came out of left field.”
Noone knows for sure why Jarren’s heart began beating irregularly, but one doctor theorized that it resulted from a chest cold. It is possible a piece of mucus got stuck to the heart and caused the abnormality.
Doctors determined it was an electrical issue and that is when the cardiac ablation procedure was brought up.
“We were lost and didn’t know what to do. One doctor said medication could possibly improve the situation, but Jarren wouldn’t be able to play sports anymore,” Donna said. “Jarren wasn’t going for that idea. Our other option was the ablation procedure, which was usually effective in correcting the problem.”
Cardiac ablation works by scarring or destroying tissue in the heart that triggers or sustains an abnormal heart rhythm. In some cases, cardiac ablation prevents abnormal electrical signals from entering your heart and, thus, stops the arrhythmia.
It seemed like the best course of action so the procedure was scheduled for Aug. 4, 2017, at Children’s. No one ever imagined how terribly wrong it would go.
In his first interview with the Baltimore Sun Media Group since the ordeal began, Jarren said he thought the heart issue would be cleared up quickly and he would be back playing football at Broadneck.
“The whole entire time I thought there would be some quick thing that they would do and nothing bad would come out of it,” Jarren said on Wednesday while sitting on the living room couch of his home in Arnold.
It turns out the cardiac ablation pro- cedure was a life-changing event. Again, there is no clear-cut answer as to why a relatively low-risk operation wound up almost being fatal.
“It is so incredibly rare what happened to Jarren. It is like one in a million,” Donna said. “Honestly, they don’t know what went wrong. It could have been a reaction to the anesthesia or his heart just didn’t like the procedure.”
When Jarren finally woke up in the hospital following the failed cardiac ablation, he had tubes and wires running everywhere. He was heavily sedated and partially paralyzed, but knew something had gone horribly wrong.
“What ripped my heart out the most was when it first happened and Jarren was lying in that bed. He would come to every now and then and ask, ‘What happened?’ What could Donna and I say to him?” Ivin said during an interview this past week. “Still to this day, I can remember reading his lips: ‘What happened?’ ”
A new phase of life
Initially, there was hope that Jarren’s normal heart function would return on its own, but as the days passed that became more and more unlikely.
Eventually, doctors delivered the news that because of the damage done during the cardiac ablation procedure, Jarren would likely require a heart transplant. They suggested implanting a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, a battery-operated, mechanical pump.
The Jasper family initially resisted that idea and was hopeful a balloon angioplasty procedure could help jump-start the normal heart function. Unfortunately, doctors determined that idea would not work. Navy football had just completed practice on Aug. 14 when Ivin received a phone call from his wife stating firmly that Jarren needed a new heart.
“When it all first started, we didn’t want anything to do with the LVAD. We wanted his heart function to come back completely,” Ivin said. “Next thing you know, the LVAD became the only hope.”
Dr. Steven Boyce from Washington MedStar Hospital was responsible for implanting the LVAD, which helps the left ventricle (main pumping chamber of the heart) deliver blood to the rest of the body.
“Thankfully, we had one of the best doctors in the whole world. I remember shaking Dr. Boyce’s hand with a firm grip and he said, ‘Ivin, be careful now. These hands are insured by Lloyds of London.’ Dr. Boyce was very informative, very upbeat and very reassuring,” Ivin said.
By this point, word had spread through the college football world about Jarren. Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney sent a personalized video message to Jarren, and dozens of other Division I programs followed suit in one way or another.
“I wasn’t down, but it did make me happy,” Jarren said. “I feel like if I would have gotten down I would have gotten sadder, and I really didn’t feel the need to be sad.”
For the entire Navy football family, which had been rooting for Jarren since the news broke about his predicament, Oct. 7 was an important day. Having been released from the hospital and allowed to remain at home because the LVAD was functioning properly, Jarren attended the Navy-Air Force game with his mother.
“It was a good day. That was my first game of the year and it just felt good to be back going to the games again,” Jarren said when asked about his memory of the service academy showdown.
Donna corrected her son, calling it a “great day.” Navy defeated Air Force 48-45 in a real thriller after quarterback Zach Abey tossed a 15-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Tyler Carmona with 15 seconds remaining.
Sitting in a private suite in the press box, Jarren became exhausted during the second half of the game and tried to stretch out in order to sleep. Donna realized he’d had enough and decided to head home. They were leaving the stadium when the crowd started roaring because Air Force had scored on a 51-yard pass play.
Donna told Jarren they could not leave with the game hanging in the balance so they watched Navy’s final scoring drive from the end zone in the closed end of the stadium. During the post-game locker room celebration, Niumatalolo presented the game ball to the 14-year-old who had inspired the entire Navy football team.
“Today is a great day — not because we beat Air Force, but because Jarren Jasper is “It is so incredibly rare what happened to Jarren. It is like one in a million,” Donna Jasper, left, said of her son, who went into cardiac arrest last year and almost died. here,” Niumatalolo said.
With the help of the LVAD, Jarren was able to move forward with life. He kept up with schoolwork thanks to a home tutor provided by the Anne Arundel County Public Schools system and attended Navy football practice on occasion.
Things were far from normal, but the outlook was much brighter as the Jasper family began the process of hoping and praying for a donor heart that was a match for Jarren.
A perfect heart
When Donna met with Dr. Niti Dham, the pediatric cardiologist who would perform the transplant, she asked how much a new heart cost. Dham replied that it was basically $1 million.
Barbara Niumatalolo, wife of the Navy head coach who accompanied Donna for that appointment, leaned forward and said, “Well we don’t want a $1 million heart; we want a $2 million heart!”
Dham was somewhat amused and responded, “Oh, you want the penthouse.” To which Donna said: “I want the penthouse with an ocean view and palm trees outside.”
Ivin, Donna and Jarren were at the family cabin at Deep Creek Lake in late January when Dham called with the news they had been waiting six months to hear: A donor heart had come available.
“We got the penthouse,” Dham told Donna on the phone.
Time was of the essence so the family immediately drove to Children’s National Medical Center without even taking time to collect all their belongings. During the long drive from Western Maryland to D.C., all Jarren could think about was the fact his Playstation 4 console had been left at the cabin.
Dr. Pranava Sinha, a cardiac surgeon, performed a successful transplant on the morning of Jan. 30 and Jarren’s body accepted the heart well. Jarren was asked on Wednesday what he remembered about waking up following the operation.
“I remember my brother was in the room and he wasn’t there the day before so I was kind of confused about that,” he said.
Jaylen Jasper, a standout volleyball player at Stanford University, was sitting bedside when his little brother opened his eyes and said, “Jarren, you got a hew heart.” Donna started crying tears of joy as she watched Jarren’s fingers reach for the wires attached to the battery pack that powered the LVAD.
“When Jarren couldn’t find those wires, he realized it was true,” she said.
Two weeks after the surgery, following numerous tests, Jarren was released from the hospital. In a fitting conclusion to an incredible journey, the youngster returned home on Valentine’s Day.
There have been all sorts of milestones since. Jarren celebrated his 15th birthday on April 28 and passed his six-month biopsy with flying colors on July 12 at Children’s. That was a critical time marker as it provided solid proof the body was truly accepting the new heart.
By far the biggest milestone came on Aug. 4 when Donna commemorated the oneyear anniversary of Jarren’s initial heart failure with a posting to Facebook and a huge hug of her youngest child.
“I just started sobbing when I hugged Jarren that day and he got annoyed and said, ‘Mom, it’s over and done with now. No more tears...’ I am constantly amazed by how stoic he has been through all of this,” Donna said. “Jarren is truly the strongest human being I’ve ever known. He shows absolutely no emotion about anything.”
Last week, Donna took Jarren to Broadneck High to get his class schedule arranged. After not attending school for an entire year, Jarren is looking forward to being back in that environment interacting with friends.
“I’m just trying to get back to as normal a life as possible and doing the things I did before any of this happened,” the shy and soft-spoken teenager said.
Jarren misses playing sports and longs for the day he is physically able to resume those activities. A tube that was inserted through his groin caused some nerve damage in the leg and foot, which has limited his mobility.
Donna does not want her son to play football again, but Jarren gets mad whenever she says that.
“If it’s up to me, I would say no to football, but if it’s up to Ivin and Jarren, the answer is yes,” Donna said diplomatically.
Jarren will continue to undergo regular cardiac therapy and physical therapy as he works to improve his overall strength and health. He will be required to take medication for the rest of his life and looks forward to 2020 when the biopsies will only need to be done once a year.
“I wake up every morning and go to bed every night thanking the Lord. God has great things planned for this young man because he left him with us,” Donna said.
Ivin shakes his head and smiles when he mentions that he actually enjoys hearing Jaylen yell at his younger brother.
“Now that things are better, they’re back at it again, which is really good. Jaylen yells at Jarren to get out of his room and to leave his stuff alone,” Ivin said. “Jarren is back to being the annoying little brother as far as Jaylen is concerned. It’s good to hear that again because it means that things are getting back to normal.”
Ivin sometimes allows his mind to wander back to the day before the fateful cardiac ablation procedure. Jarren had a sleepover with several friends and they were down in the basement playing video games and goofing around.
“I look at Jarren and think about where he wanted to be at this point in his life and what he had plans to do, and it’s hard to see that he can’t be that kid anymore,” Ivin said.
Before sending Jarren home after the heart transplant, doctors talked to the family about seeking counseling. A young boy had just gone through a year’s worth of life-altering experiences and there are all sorts of issues to confront.
A patient specialist interviewed Jarren at length prior to discharge and determined, based off his responses to questions and overall behavior, that counseling was not needed at this time.
“The strength and resiliency of that kid is amazing. That’s why I say that Jarren is my hero,” Ivin said. “People ask how I got through this and I have to tell them: My life hasn’t changed. Jarren’s life has changed. He’s the one who had to go through this ordeal.
“I get my strength from my son because he’s been a real soldier going through this. He’s remained positive and upbeat the whole way. He’s exhibited a strength and courage beyond anything I could imagine and given us all a different outlook on life.”