It was Logan Elliott’s second birthday. But there weren’t any decorations, birthday wishes or presents. Logan’s family was just trying to get through one of the most difficult days of their lives, said his mother, Rayme Elliott.

“The nurse said to me, ‘You got to hold an angel on Earth,’” Rayme said as tears streamed down her face. “I got to be there for his first breath and his last.”

Logan tipped the scales at just more than 8 pounds when he was born on Aug. 5, 2008. In his first month, the newborn sometimes wore an infectious smile that was matched by his inquisitive, piercing blue eyes. But he was inextricably fussy. Rayme thought her son had colic — or prolonged periods of crying — but nothing the three-time mother hadn’t seen before, Rayme said.

In September, Logan took his first trip up the coast on a family vacation to Oregon. The family noticed more crying, a lack of energy, small appetite and slight change in skin color.

Soon after the family returned home to Santa Barbara, Logan had a routine checkup. When the pediatrician began running oxygen saturation tests on Oct. 7, the nurses switched the machine three times to confirm their fear.

The Elliotts — Rayme, husband Brett and their two daughters, Kaelee and Emma — were in for the biggest emotional roller-coaster ride they could imagine.

Logan had a 62 percent blood oxygen saturation; the doctors diagnosed him with a critical heart condition.

“What? I believe you have the wrong room,” Rayme told the doctors.

There was no mistake. At 3 a.m. Logan rode an emergency helicopter to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. When he arrived, his blood pressure was so low nurses that had to pin him down and bend his hand back to find a vein. It was the first sign of fight from the surprisingly strong 8-pounder.

Doctors warned Rayme it was going to be complicated because they couldn’t find his coronary arteries. The hospital brought in another specialist. Eight hours later, three doctors started walking down a long hall toward Rayme, whose heart began to sink.

One doctor had an imprint on his forehead from his goggles — he didn’t look her in the eye. He told her to follow her to into a room where they could talk.

“No,” the 37-year-old mother demanded. “Tell me now if he’s alive.”

“Yes, he is,” the doctor replied.

Logan was diagnosed with a condition called double outlet right ventricle (DORV). According to Children’s Hospital Boston, it is a congenital heart disease in which both the pulmonary artery (which carriers oxygen-poor blood to the lungs) and the aorta (which carriers oxygen-rich blood from the heart throughout the body) come from the same pumping chamber.

The condition caused Logan’s oxygen-poor blood to be carried throughout his body, explaining his lethargy and skinniness.

Logan also had a hole in his heart known as a ventrical septal defect (VSD), which allowed the oxygen-rich blood from his lungs to flow to the left side of his heart. But his body still was not getting enough oxygen, which forced his heart to work even harder.

Logan needed open-heart surgery to connect the pulmonary artery to the right ventricle and connect the aorta to the left ventricle to close the VSD.

“Everything that was supposed to be easy was hard and everything that was supposed to be hard was easy,” the doctor explained.

After the surgery, life support kept Logan alive. The doctors had to install a pacemaker on the outside of Logan’s body because he would flatline 45 minutes after they took him off.

The doctors told Rayme that if there wasn’t an improvement in seven days, they would have to make a decision. Logan had a 50/50 chance of surviving.

“Then we’re going on the 50-plus side, OK?,” Rayme said.

“Damned” to leave the hospital without her son, Rayme transformed from mother to doctor — with the aid of WebMD, she posed different solutions to a condition doctors didn’t have much experience with. DOVR occurs four times in every million births.

When the doctors took him off life support, Logan had to be intubated each time. His lungs would collapse due to complications from heart surgery called pleural effusion. A large amount of extra fluid pushed the pleura (thin lung covering) against his lungs until they collapsed. Despite these complications, Logan survived after doctors took him off life support after the fourth day.

“The doctors were amazing,” Rayme recalled. “All of these women weren’t like nurses, they were like moms. They treated him as their own.”

But aside from withdraws from the medication and the need for a pacemaker, Logan started getting better and better.

“I’m not a religious person, but I remember that I prayed for him and I said I didn’t really deserve it because I turned my back (before), but I asked (God) to help us — not for me but for him,” Rayme said. “After that everything started going up, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re going to make it.’”

After 53 long days that Rayme spent with her son in the hospital, Logan was released. He was in the hospital from Oct. 7 to Dec. 2, 2008.

Rayme’s mother, Rory Duran, couldn’t believe how strong Logan was, especially at 2 months old. She said Rayme never left his side.

“He had the bluest eyes in the world that would almost speak to you — you just knew if he could speak he would say ‘Gotchya’ (I’m just fine),” Duran said.

Logan’s sister, Kaelee, said Logan was her hero.

“Logan showed me that in the worst situations, it depends how you react to them, she said. “His strength made me believe you can do anything, even if there is so much wrong in life.”

At home, Logan had to take 10 different medications a day as well as shots. Not to mention, Brett had the insurance companies to deal with. Logan’s surgeries, transportation and medication totaled more than $1 million.

“Logan never complained, never argued,” Rayme said. “He just smiled all the time, which is why we never knew anything was wrong.”

A seemingly healthy Logan experienced his first Christmas and his first birthday.

But there was one night, in October of last year, that Logan was incredibly fussy, said Rayme, who had to go to work the next morning. Brett stayed up with Logan all night, but could tell something wasn’t right. At 5:30 a.m., he woke up Rayme, who immediately rushed him to the hospital.

For Rayme, it was déja vu. As doctors were about to run tests on Logan, she stroked his head and told him, “It’s OK, boobers, we’ve been through this before. Mommy’s right here.”

She put his pacifier in his mouth, which he strangely spit out, Rayme thought. Then the corner of his mouth started drooping, his eyes rolled back and the monotonous tone rang as Logan flatlined. Rayme was immediately ushered out of the room.

She described the scene as if it were straight from a movie. Twenty doctors and nurses packed the tiny room, carts flew in and out of the swinging doors.

“You could feel the panic in the air,” Rayme said.

An hour passed — three men started walking toward her and asked if there was someone she could call. Not long after, Brett arrived.

Doctors told her Logan had a heartbeat but had been without oxygen for an hour and there would be extensive brain damage.

“Brain damage?” Rayme said. “I can handle that. Go save him.”

Rayme went to her son’s bedside as doctors worked frantically. There was a faint pulse the doctors were picking up. “You know he has a pacemaker,” Rayme said.

Each person’s face went blank, she said. The doctors hadn’t realized there was a pacemaker in his body.

They used a defibrillator to try to save Logan, but soon people started to slowly leave the room. Rayme could feel a woman’s hands brace her just below her ribs as doctors told her that they could give him morphine to help him sleep and asked her if she wanted to hold him. Logan died in his mother’s arms.

“It’s a very scary place to be when you have no fear,” Rayme said. “No one can scare me because I’ve faced my greatest fear.”

By the time they had gotten to the hospital the morning of Oct. 14, it was too late. Logan’s kidneys had shut down and his liver was failing. He was beyond saving.

Logan persevered through a congenital heart disease, open-heart surgery, collapsed lungs and a 50/50 chance of surviving life support just months after he was born. But it was a blood infection that took the 1-year-old’s life.

“He survived everything and died from a stupid infection,” Rayme said. “It pissed me off.”

No words can describe the feeling of holding your baby as he takes his last breath, Rayme said.

“We thought we were good,” she said of Logan’s condition. “We got one year, one of everything. You can’t complain; well, you can but it’s not going to do any good.”

Rayme tried to never let people know she was sad. Everything was a celebration when it concerned Logan.

“Brett and Rayme weren’t going to make themselves the focal point by being grieving parents,” Duran said of her daughter and son-in-law.

At Logan’s funeral, no one was allowed to wear black; it was Hawaiian-themed. More than 200 people attended, including doctors and nurses from UCLA.

“The easy way is to go to the depressed side, to go to the why me,” Rayme said. “But after his funeral there were over 200 people there. To be so loved, I can only be so lucky. So even though it’s easier to go that way, I can be that person for anyone else. I can be strong.”

When Rayme was struggling with the eulogy, Brett told her to write it from her heart.

“I told him I couldn’t because it wasn’t just broken, it was shattered,” Rayme said. “In my head broken you can fix, but shattered you can’t.”

Rayme’s mother said she hopes Rayme and Brett don’t second-guess themselves because they did everything they could to save their son.

“There was such a connection between (Rayme and Logan), which is why losing him was such a stunning shock,” Duran said. “Brett and Rayme are incredible parents. I have no doubt in my mind that they did everything in their power. I don’t know what else they could’ve done.”

The loss was difficult for the entire family to bear. Duran quoted an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem to describe where Logan’s death left her: “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”

“Grandmothers don’t get recognized that they suffer twice,” Duran said. “It’s the most helpless feeling. You feel so useless, like you let your kid down, because moms are supposed to always make things better.”

Despite living for just 14 months, Logan lived a full life, said Brett’s father, Brad Elliott.

“I couldn’t wait until he started talking because I wanted to ask him so many questions,” Elliott said. “His eyes said things he couldn’t. He understood life.

“I became stronger because of him. He was sent here for a purpose, to make us understand things we didn’t before. He was a very strong little boy. I’ve never seen a child like that before. I learned a lot about my son and Rayme, how strong they are.”

Rayme will continue to be strong because that’s what Logan would’ve wanted, she said.

“I’m so afraid he will be forgotten because he was here for such a short time, and I just can’t let his memory go, too,” she said. “This is how I can possibly save the next (child).”

Rayme will form a team in the Start! Santa Barbara Heart Walk so others, hopefully, won’t have to face the fear of losing a loved one. The 5k walk, sponsored by the American Heart Association, gives individuals or teams a chance to raise money for heart disease and stroke research — Santa Barbara’s No. 1 and No. 2 killers, said Eric Thompson, AHA senior communication and marketing director. The walk will be on Oct. 9.

Rayme wants Logan to be the face of change. She not only strives to further cardiovascular research but to change the current standards of medical procedure. She wants mandatory blood screens instituted every three weeks after heart surgery to prevent what happened to Logan. She also wants doctors to pay closer attention to a baby’s heart when administering an ultrasound to ascertain heart defects. But most of all, she wants to help families who shared her experience, she said.

“(I want) to be that shoulder for that other mom whp’s maybe not as strong, who can’t get out of the house, who can’t find anybody,” Rayme said. “That was the hardest part because nobody knows what to say to you.

“My goal is to not let another family hurt; we want to fix the broken hearts.”

On Logan’s birthday, Rayme scheduled work on purpose to keep her mind busy. Her Facebook status read:

“Rayme Elliott is dizzy today. These are days where no one knows what to say, and I don’t know what to do. Logan Thomas-Neels Elliott would have been 24 months today. 2 years old. I’ll be working today to get a little distraction. Kisses to heaven, my sweet angel! I love you so much that it hurts. Godspeed little man, sweet dreams little man xoxoxooxxoxo.”

There is one saying Rayme said sums up Logan’s impact on people’s lives.

“A heart is not measured by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others,” Rayme said.

Click here to participate in the Heart Walk or click here to visit Rayme Elliott’s Facebook page to learn more about Logan.

— Noozhawk intern Alex Kacik is a graduate of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. He can be reached at akacik@noozhawk.com.