Our Hearts Beat for Sweet Baby Josephine, but her heart is just one of 2 to THREE MILLION living with CHDs, and 121 MILLION ADULTS living with a form of heart disease.
The American Heart Association will forever be a part of our lives and we are looking forward to helping raise awareness and funds to help further heart research.
Jo's combination of heart defects made her a bit of an anomaly to her Lurie teams. Every day she kept us all on our toes! We were so lucky that her surgeon was able to pivot in her first open heart surgery to do a mid-pulmonary artery banding procedure (mPA) in order to protect her body and allow her heart to function while she received intravenous nutrition, lipids and continuous feedings through a nasal gastric tube that goes through her nose, directly into her stomach.
Once she grew strong enough, they were able to repair most of her heart. Not all heart surgeons are familiar with the procedure, so we are fortunate that our surgeon was part of our team!
We don't know what Josephine's future will hold, but we want to help support the funding for research and training of cardiac surgeons and doctors in the hopes that one day all families will be in the right place with the teams caring for their babies!