Life-Changing Doctor is a Friend and Hero to Local Family

A local family has one man to thanks for giving their son a new chance at life, according to an article in the Sonoma Index-Tribune.

Logan Ebert was born with esophageal atresia, a rare condition causing a gap between the stomach and mouth. The cure, in severe cases such as Ebert's, involves massive reconstructing by moving the stomach or reconfiguring a piece of the colon – both procedures with massive life-altering side effects. 

The family, then living in Colorado, wanted better options for their son. So they turned to Dr. John Foker, then practicing in Minnesota, who was performing an experimental surgery resulting in a gradually expanded esophagus. Folker had performed the procedure once before.

Logan, then an infant, underwent the procedure successfully. Since then Logan, now 16, has kept in touch with the life-changing doctor, who flew in for his first birthday party and last week stayed with the Eberts, who have lived in Sonoma for the last 16-years, while attending a medical conference in San Francisco.

The Eberts, according to the Index-Tribune, just want to get the word out about the dramatic effects of the procedure.

“Knowing that Logan has such a fantastic quality of life, I want other children to be able to have this surgery," Mara Lee Ebert, Logan's mother, told the Index-Tribune.