McKenna

Our beautiful daughter, McKenna, was born on March 20, 2000 weighing in at 9 lbs. 1 oz. This was my husband’s first child (I already had three healthy children from a previous marriage, ages 12, 15 and 18) and we couldn’t have been more thrilled with the birth of our daughter. Like my other children, she was born by C-section after a healthy, normal pregnancy. She wasn’t blue and she appeared to be a big, healthy baby. The day after her birth we were told that she had a heart murmur and that it probably wasn’t anything serious. Even though she wasn’t showing any other symptoms, they decided to perform an echocardiogram that afternoon just to be on the safe side. The following morning, a visibly nervous nurse came into my room and said that she needed to take the baby to the nursery to get her vitals. Since she had just had her vitals taken 45 minutes earlier, I knew that something was wrong. I called my husband at work to tell him that I thought something might be wrong with the baby and when he got to the hospital another nurse came in to confirm my suspicions. She told us that our baby had pulmonary atresia and that she needed to get to the nearby children’s hospital where she would probably have to undergo surgery right away. We were devastated... I kept thinking that there had to be some kind of mistake—she was so perfect in every way!

We got to R B & C hospital and when McKenna was 7 days old, McKenna had her first surgery—a pulmonary valvotomy and B-T shunt. She did well and we came home only five days post op—we were so excited to finally be bringing her home. Unfortunately, after only being home for two weeks, she developed a respiratory infection and she ended up back in the hospital on a ventilator. Aside from the frequent visits to her cardiologist, we were finally able to relax and just be a normal family. Then when she was two months old, her echo showed that she had more blockage of her pulmonary valve and that she would need a cardiac cath and a balloon valvuloplasty to open it back up. However, when they went to do the procedure they found that too much muscle had built up around her valve and now they would have to do her next open heart surgery sooner than they had expected. We were so disappointed—she had already been through so much in her few short months and we hated to see her have to go through more. We took her home and had to wait a month for her to have the surgery. I don’t know which was worse—having everything happen so fast and being in a state of shock (like we were with her first surgery) or knowing for a month in advance that your child is going to have such a high risk surgery. McKenna had her second surgery on July 10 of 2000 and they did another pulmonary valvotomy and right ventricular outflow tract (RVOT) patch and they closed off the B-T shunt. McKenna came home seven days after her surgery and we had a long and rough recuperation period, during which time she ended up back in the hospital because of swelling in her airway again.

We thought the worst was behind us, but for the next year and a half McKenna had numerous hospital stays for respiratory problems that no one was able to diagnose. We finally found a doctor that discovered she had formed scar tissue in her airway because of the many times she had been intubated. They were able to do laser destruction of this scar tissue and after five surgeries, her respiratory issues have improved greatly. She also had her ASD closed this past August in the cath lab and for once we didn’t have any post op problems! We are hoping that this was her last procedure, but we have to wait and see how her heart grows along with her.

McKenna is now a smart and sassy five year old and you would never know she has been through as much as she has. She is such a strong little girl who has taught us so much about what is truly important in life. She is our special little angel and we are so blessed to have her.