When pediatric cardiologist Joel Brenner began caring for 8-month-old Christian Kurowski in 1993, little did he know he would be facing him a quarter century later on the deck of the USS Constellation in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor wearing a Navy uniform similar to the one he himself once wore as a naval medical officer. Kurowski had invited Brenner to the ceremony for his promotion to full lieutenant, in gratitude for diagnosing his condition, steering him toward potentially life-saving surgery as an infant, and following up as his cardiologist over two decades.

“It’s truly an honor to be here,” Kurowski said. “I had open heart surgery when I was a baby and there was a strong chance I wasn’t going to make it until Dr. Brenner got involved. So it’s very appropriate for me to have Dr. Brenner here, who himself was a lieutenant in the Navy.”

“I could never imagine this — it’s the highlight of my career,” Brenner said. “When you called, it was just incredible. I have been to patients’ weddings and funerals, it comes with the territory. But this is really special.”

In partial anomalous pulmonary venous return, the condition Kurowski was born with, some of the pulmonary veins carrying blood from the lungs to the heart flow into the heart’s right, rather than left, atrium. The symptoms are usually mild and may not ever occur, but later in life too much blood flow to the lungs can lead to pulmonary artery hypertension — high blood pressure in the lungs — which can cause the right side of the heart to become overworked and fail. Surgeons successfully repaired Kurowski’s heart, but the condition requires lifelong monitoring of any changes by a cardiologist.