Our daughter was born on the 20th July 1996. She is our 4th child. I went home on day two and Mikayla was never examined before we left. At two weeks old we took her to our G.P. as she was always coughing. He asked if we had been told that Mikayla had a murmur. We hadn't and he thought it was significant enough to send us straight to the hospital. She was pink and the paediatrician thought well enough to wait a heart scan. We went home and awaited the appointment.

At 8 weeks of age Mikayla was diagnosed with TOF. We were told that surgery was necessary before she was one. We were devastated.

The next week Mikayla had a severe cyanotic spell where she was briefly unconscious. We were hospitalised for 11 days while she was stabilised on Propanalol.

At four months, Mikayla had her TOF repair. Mikayla had quite severe stenosis of her arteries to the lungs. During the repair, her valve was cut through as it was useless. Before we left the hospital we were told that some of the stenosis in one of the arteries was still there and it was felt that it would need repairing at a later stage.

In 1998, March, Mikayla had a catheterization to see if the stenosis could be repaired with a balloon. It was too severe and there also was an aneurism in the previous repair in the outflow tract of the pulmonary artery because of the pressure of the blood trying to get down the arteries. In July that year Mikayla had a further repair to that aneurism and a full redo of both arteries. The doctors were very pleased with the outcome.

Mikayla is doing very well even though she is quite small. She has a very low exercise tolerance, that the doctors feel is because of having an absent pulmonary valve. She is at school now and copes quite well even though she does become quite tired at the end of the terms.