By Tanner Kent
Free Press Staff Writer
NORTH MANKATO —
Ethan Rittmiller is 9 years old and desperately needs a new heart to relieve a life-threatening condition.
Students and staff at Monroe Elementary in North Mankato this week gave Ethan all the heart he could handle.
The school community snapped to action right after Ethan received his diagnosis of restrictive cardiomyopathy — a rare condition in which the walls of the heart are too rigid to allow it to fill adequately with blood.
Every Friday in May, staff and students made donations to earn the privilege of wearing hats, sunglasses, pajamas and Minnesota Vikings gear to school. Today staff members are holding a pancake breakfast fundraiser at Applebees Restaurant.
So far, Monroe Elementary has raised $6,300 to go toward the cost of Ethan’s heart transplant, a procedure that costs about $500,000. Gretchen Rehm, who manages a Mankato-based branch of Horace Mann Insurance, also donated $1,200 to the effort.
The Rittmillers were presented with the checks Thursday in the school lobby as Monroe staff gathered to offer hugs and hope.
“Without even asking, people in the community just started doing what they could to help,” said Jody Rittmiller, Ethan’s mother and an instructor in Monroe’s media center. “All the support has been so amazing.”
Jody and husband Ben began to suspect something was amiss with Ethan’s health last year. He was becoming easily winded and often tired. Even the school’s physical education teacher noticed a general lack of energy.
At first, doctors thought Ethan was struggling with asthma and gave him an inhaler.
But in February, while on a vacation in San Diego, Jody and Ben were alarmed when Ethan was too tired for sightseeing and was wearing down earlier and earlier in the day.
Around the same time, Ethan hosted his 9th birthday party at the Science Museum of Minnesota. That day, Jody had to comfort her son when he was climbing the stairs with his friends and was too fatigued to make it to the top.
“He was in tears,” she said.
In March, Ethan began a whirlwind series of doctor visits and medical tests. By the end of the month, doctors had identified that Ethan’s atria were three times larger than normal, his right ventricle, liver and abdomen were enlarged, and pressure in the pulmonary artery was causing congestion in his lungs. Doctors told Ethan’s parents that heart failure would be almost certain without a transplant.
He is now classified as a so-called “status two” transplant recipient — meaning, he is in the second priority level — and is awaiting word from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester that his heart has arrived.
When the call does come, the Rittmiller family will live in Rochester for about four months while Ethan recovers.
“The trunk is packed,” said Jody, who added that her family is keenly, and quite painfully, aware of the fact that another family’s tragedy will ultimately save Ethan’s life.
“We’re just waiting for the call.”
Meanwhile, Ethan continues to show his strength.
He’s taking a cocktail of pills, from diuretics to blood thinners, to keep his health stable. His physical activity has been drastically limited, but the youngster adds that “my brain is strong.”
Ethan said he models his own bravery after that of his parents, especially his father, who is an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and that he was touched by the generosity of his classmates.
He said the most frustrating aspect of his ordeal is wondering “why I have to do it.” But he also said that the day he receives his transplant and is restored to his formerly spry and energetic self will be “really fun.”
Anyone wishing to donate to Ethan’s transplant fund can visit www.CotaForEthanR.com. Donations are being routed through Children Organ Transplant Association, a registered nonprofit designed for such a purpose.
