The girl

The girl with the train-wreck heart is still on track. Allison Lowery, 19, is a freshman education major at the University of Arkansas planning to become a fifth-grade teacher.

But Lowery's defined career path, striking looks and record-setting achievements in the high jump at Bryant High School belie her lifelong struggle with a freak, and potentially deadly, heart condition.

"We like to think of her as our miracle child," Charlie Staggs said of his granddaughter.

Lowery's arrival in the fall of 1989 was a Kodak moment for Staggs, the longtime manager of War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.

Staggs delivered his happy news near the end of a Razorbacks football game against Texas-El Paso with an ad-lib message on War Memorial's scoreboard. The following day, news about Allison Lowery wasn't good. There was a heart murmur, and later a blue tint of the skin around the mouth, indicating a lack of oxygen in her blood. It got worse. Lowery's congenital heart defect was so rare, so complex that her doctors at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock didn't have a name for her condition.

But her story eventually became so compelling that it was featured on the Discovery Channel's new medical show, Surgery Saved My Life, in December 2006.

"Train-Wreck Heart" was an appropriate title for the episode since Lowery was born with:

Dextrocardia (heart is on the right side of the chest instead of the left).

Transposition of the aorta and pulmonary artery (depriving the body of oxygen-rich blood).

Atrial Septal Defect (small hole between the upper chambers of the heart). Ventricular Septal Defect (large hole between lower chambers of the heart). Blockage of the mitral valve, the one-way valve between the upper and lower chambers, or atrium and ventricle, on the left side of the heart.

"We've made a lot of progress in the last 19 years as far as what we're able to do," said Elizabeth Frazier, the only cardiologist Lowery has ever had. "But she would certainly fall into that category of complex congenital heart disease. Her heart was on the wrong side of her chest, which is a big clue. Everything about her heart was twisted and turned. It was certainly at the outer end of the spectrum of complexity."

Congenital heart defects are the most common type of birth defect, according to the National Heart, Long and Blood Institute, affecting 8 out of every 1,000 newborns. Each year, more than 35,000 babies in the United States are born with congenital heart defects.

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