I am a 28 year old woman that has TGA, operated with arteriall switch when I was 7 weeks old (before that I had 2 surgeries to allow continued blood flow). I still have a heart murmur that you can hear, but concerning physical activity; as long as the doctor doesn´t advise against it, the heart most likely benefits from the activity. My mother has told me that, even as a kid, I regulated my activities myself; I ran around like crazy, and when I felt tired I just relaxed or slept. I still do sometimes need to sleep in the middle of the day. I have a Master degree in Financial Economics, lived several years abroad in France studying, I work-out most days; bicycling, jogging (running 5k and 10k), yoga/pilates, kickboxing and racquetball and I love it :) Your kid can probably whatever he wants to do, you just have to make sure you´ll allow him to push limits like other kids. I´ve been to a lot of summer camps and week-end camps for kids with congenital heart failure, and the worst thing you can do is overprotect your child because then your child won´t know his boundaries and won´t be able to take care of himself when your not around (in school, college, with friends, sleepovers etc...)
I have an 18 month old son who was born with a heart condition. L-TGA and also still to this day has heart murmurs. At 3mnths old he had open heart surgery to close a rather large murmur that allowed blood flow where it wasn't supposed to flow. To understand it better I say he has a backwards heart, I was told with this condition he wouldn't be able to play sports, run around like all boys do, and be a normal kid. My question that I could never ask the surgeon is, "What is the life span of a child with these problems?" After his surgery i was told he would be a more calmer baby, probably a more calm kid than most; that is definitely not the case! I was told at his previous appointment that his heart could crash??!! I am just worried for my little boy, thankyou