13-year-old patient thanks heart surgeon for keeping him alive

LOUISVILLE, Ky (WDRB) -- This American Heart Month, a heart surgeon and one of his patients are sharing their special bond.

Clay Harris, AKA Courageous Clay, is pretty popular at Norton Children's Hospital.

"I just became popular I guess," Harris said.

If you have ever met him, you would know why.

"He's the best kid ever," Nicole Pendino, Harris' mother, said. "He has been resilient. He has been through so much, and has fought."

Harris first started proving he was a fighter shortly after he was born in August of 2006.

"At 48 hours old he went into cardiac arrest in my arms at the hospital and the pediatrician told me that there was something wrong with his heart," Pendino said.

At three-days-old his mother said Harris became a patient at Norton Children's Heart Institute.

"When we got up here they kept telling us it was a pretty severe defect. It was hypoplastic left heart, so the entire left side of his heart was underdeveloped," Pendino said.

That is when Clay first met Dr. Erle Austin who performed open heart surgery on him at one-week-old.

"I've always been interested in is it actually possible to only live with half of your heart? You just need to figure out how to orient the circulation in such a way to make that happen and that's really what we spent most of our time with Clay on," Dr. Austin said.

In total, Dr. Austin has performed five open heart surgeries on Harris before the age of three. That is not all Harris has gone through. In his 13 years of life he has also suffered a stroke and has undergone a heart transplant.

"There was a tough time during all of this. So I had to push it, push it, push it," Harris said.

WDRB asked Dr. Austin what it is like now to see Harris at 13-years-old. Dr. Austin choked up.

"It's heartwarming," Dr. Austin said. "Not just the fact that he's alive and progressing, but he's got a heartwarming personality... there are not many people like that whether they got a heart condition or not."

A kid with a grateful heart of gold.

"We couldn't do this without him," Harris said.

"We couldn't. Clay wouldn't be here without him," Pendino said.

To Dr. Austin, Harris has become more than a patient. He has become a friend.

"I can get pretty emotional when I actually think about it," Dr. Austin said. "He's a human being whose life I've impacted and I recognize it. He recognizes it."

Two beating hearts that continue to grow and learn from one another.

"He's a little bit like me because of the fact that he'll tell you that he doesn't give up easy and I'm sort of the same way," Dr. Austin said.

If there is a lesson to be taught here Harris wants it to be this.

"Just be strong and never give up," Harris said.

Statistics show nearly one in every 100 babies are born with a heart defect in the United States each year. Each year, Norton Children's Heart Institute said it performs more than 17,000 procedures on patients of all ages.