Santos’s Story

He is, quite simply, the tiniest of warriors.

Santos Escobar, a beautiful and engaging little boy who has yet to even reach his second birthday, recently underwent surgery at El Paso Children’s Hospital — a surgery to a skull that was fused, a skull that would not grow as the brain grew on the inside.

It is a one-in-a-million case, the doctor said. One requiring a four-hour surgery that was the first of its kind in El Paso.

Santos was born with pansynostosis, a rare condition in which the bones in his skull had fused together, keeping it from expanding to accommodate his growing brain.

The condition left Santos without the ability to walk or really even talk. And, without this surgery and a smaller procedure in April, he would never have danced, never have had that life to enjoy.

The prognosis for the beautiful little boy was simple and grim without the surgery.

“He would go blind, he would have terrible headaches, and then there would be death,” said Dr. David Yates, who is Division Chief of Cranial and Facial Surgery at El Paso Children’s Hospital and Fellow of the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons.

Now, though, the tiny warrior is flourishing.

“He can walk now and run and play and engage with his brother,” his mother Sanjuana Escobar said. “He loves to dance. He laughs. He enjoys life.”

Escobar, as any mother would, grows emotional just talking about the journey of two heart-pounding, breath stealing surgeries. These were moments where she could only sit and wait and cry and pray.

She gathers the tiny boy in her arms, kisses his head.

“He is a warrior, he is a fighter … he is a fighter for sure,” the 27-year-old mother said, her voice breaking as she choked back more tears.

It was just two days after the second surgery. She kissed her little boy again and said softly, “He is a miracle.”

Miracles, of course, are the result of weeks and months and years of research and, most assuredly, the result of the skilled hands of the well-trained surgeon Yates.

And the process was little short of miraculous, stunningly miraculous.

“You are my warrior,” his 9-year-old brother Juan told the little fighter. “You are my champion.”

Yates has photos of Santos’ little brain, with marks where the unforgiving skull was pressing into it. There was simply no room left for the brain to grow.

“Santos was referred to us and we wanted to get him on the operating table right away,” Yates said. “There are sutures in the normal skull and those allow the skull to grow as the brain grows. As the brain grows, the skull grows. Santos’ skull did not have those sutures.”

Prior to Yates’ arrival to Children’s Hospital last year, the nearest places to get such a surgery were San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and Phoenix.

“We were able to plan it out virtually first,” Yates said. “We planned it out on the computer. We inserted small rods that stuck out of his head. He called them his little horns. Each day for 30 days he would come back in and we would turn them and his skull grows by a millimeter each time.”

After the first surgery, Escobar got to see her son walk for the first time since he was born.

“He could walk. He could run,” Escobar said. “He walked first at McDonald’s. He wanted to go in and play with all the other children. And, for the first time, he could.”

And then came the second surgery — an intense four-hour procedure in which his face was peeled back, his skull cut open and places made, openings cut for future growth.

It seemed almost futuristic, the stuff of movies, the stuff of miracles.

His spirits remained that of a tiny warrior.

They were having trouble finding his little veins when preparing him for surgery the morning of Aug. 1, and it got a bit painful. They blew up a surgical glove and painted a face on it to distract him.

Santos laughed loudly.

Escobar carried her tiny warrior lovingly in her arms all the way to the operating room.

“The surgery was four hours but it felt like an eternity,” she said. “They would send someone out to let me know everything was OK, but I still couldn’t breathe. It was not until Dr. Yates came out and told me it was OK that I could finally breathe again.”

Yates was the miracle to the Escobar family.

“It was so hard in the beginning,” Escobar said. “I really didn’t want the surgeries. Santos was born prematurely and spent five months in an incubator to start his life.”

Pausing, gathering herself, her voice cracking with emotion, she said, “I wanted to make sure this surgery was absolutely necessary. Would he live without it? And everyone said no, no he won’t live. That’s when I began to get comfortable with the surgery. And Dr. Yates was wonderful and everyone here has been great; like a family.”

It is the story of a journey, the journey of a little boy and a man, a journey that brought them together in El Paso.

Yates began the journey that would intersect at just the perfect time for the tiny warrior.

“I went to dental school at the University of Florida,” he said. “I went on a mission trip to Mexico when I was in dental school and I saw them taking care of kids, kids with all sorts of skull deformities. It was then I decided to be an oral maxillofacial surgeon.”

Yates went to medical school at University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. He had an oral and maxillofacial surgery residency at Parkland Hospital, then a fellowship in craniofacial and cleft surgery at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport.

But why El Paso?

“I went into surgery specifically to help kids like this,” Yates said. “It’s just always been my passion. Two years before completing my fellowship I was recruited to El Paso because of the large population size and the huge need for craniofacial and cleft surgery in the area. A lot of these kids were being shipped out over 500 miles.

“There was also a huge need for Endocrinologists here,” he said. “My wife is a Latina endocrinologist and we just loved the bilingual, multicultural feel of the city.”

And so their paths crossed — the man and the tiny warrior.

“We had an awesome team in there and the El Paso Children’s Hospital was perfect because everything was geared toward children,” Yates said. “The neurosurgeon who helped me was great — Dr. Bratislav Velimirovic.

“Santos is such a cute little kid,” Yates said. “His case is super rare. One in a million. But there are other cases with deformed heads in children that are one in 200,000, which is not that rare. There are probably 25 a year in El Paso and Juárez.”

Santos had the surgery on Tuesday, Aug. 1. He was moved out of the intensive care unit on Friday, Aug. 4 and was able to go home with mom and big brother and grandma on Sunday, Aug. 6.

“He’s doing great,” Yates said. “His prognosis is good. It’s possible he could have to have another surgery but not for many, many years; possibly never again. Hopefully, never. We’ll check him every year until he’s 21. But, hopefully, never.”

The little man had this incredible surgery, this modern medical miracle and he was in the hospital for less than a week. He will be able to run and play and laugh and love with his brother and all the other children.

And the future?

Mom stroked the sleeping little boy’s forehead, smiled and said, “My son is going to be a doctor. He’s going to be a doctor and help other kids.”

Santos has been through so much — so much time in a hospital bed, so much pain, so many medical mountains to climb. But he has made it through and will celebrate his second birthday on Sept. 23.

He will sing and dance and laugh and play and breathe in life — the life he might never have had if his journey had not intersected with the doctor.

He is, after all, a warrior — the tiniest of warriors.