My name is Harper. I was born with 2 holes in my heart. It started with the doctor hearing a murmur in my heart and referring me to a cardiologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio. At only 18 days old, my parents were told about my holes. With high hopes, the doctors believed the holes would close on their own, but at 18 months old, we were told there was no closure and I would need open-heart surgery before I turned two.
In October, 2020, I underwent open-heart surgery to close both holes. I had a VSD and ASD. Surgery went great and we were in and out of the hospital in 4 days with no complications! The next few weeks would bring many trips to urgent care and the ER to monitor a sack of fluid that kept returning around my heart. This sack of fluid is called a pericardial effusion.
One day I woke up from my nap and my mom said I didn't look right. She called the nurse hotline and was told to bring me into the ER ASAP. Once in the ER, the doctors and nurses found that the pericardial effusion had grown significantly in size and was pushing on my heart. They needed to place a drain in my chest ASAP.
As mom was talking things over with the surgeon, my heart could not handle the pericardial effusion size any more and I went into cardiac arrest. My heart stopped beating in my moms arms. She tells me she was smacking my face trying to revive me because it all happened so fast. Luckily, my nurse walked in and took me from my mom. She immediately started CPR and calling "code blue". My mom says about 20 people rushed the room to care for me.
I was revived and put on a ventilator for 24 hours. The next day I would receive the drain as the chest compressions pushed the fluid away from my heart and we had to wait for it to see if it would come back, which it did.
Once the drain was inserted and fluid was released, I went back to the spunky 2 year old I was. I unfortunately had to spend Halloween and my birthday in the hospital, but the hospital staff gave me a cute costume and even a birthday present!
I return to Ohio annually to monitor my heart, and am thankful that there have been no complications since that October.
Thank you for supporting the American Heart Association and me. I am proud to be part of the "zipper club" and talk about my heart surgery and hospital almost daily!
