All donations will help purchase meaningful items for patients and fill urgent needs for patient families and the hospital, especially during the holiday season. With your help, parents and caregivers will be able to focus on what matters most: helping their child heal.
As many of you know our daughter, Ani, was born at 34 weeks on November 4, 2022. At 29 weeks, Ani was diagnosed with Ebstein's Anomaly, which is when your tricuspid valve is in the the wrong position and the valve's flaps are malformed. The result of this is that the valve does not work properly and can lead to your heart working less efficiently. Fortuanely for Ani, though the flaps may be malformed, they were functioning perfectly.
When Ani was born, we knew she would spend some time in the NICU, as she was only 34 weeks, and we also were aware that we needed to watch her Ebstein's but fortuently, we did not need to do anything to correct it at this time.
About a week and a half into Ani's life, we found out that she had COA or Coarctation of the aorta. This meant that the blood flow from Ani's heart to her limbs was being compromised by a narrowing and that she was indeed going to need surgery.
On November 22, 2022, we experienced one of the hardest days we have had yet, sending our almost 3 week old into heart surgery. Our tough little cookie underwent her four hour surgery, and fortunately came out successful. She has been recovering at Children's in the CICU and had a few bumps in the road, but is back on track and doing great.
As parents, you never want to see your child go through something like this, but Bryan and I cannot even begin to thank the surgeons, doctors and nurses who have taken such amazing care of our daughter and of us. As you can imagine, and some of you may have first hand experience, you can feel extremely helpless when in this type of situation and you rely 100% on your child's care team to take care of them the way you would.
With that being said, our family will be doing all that we can to give back to Boston Children's to ensure that all families and children are able to have what they need most during their stay at Children's.
All donations will help purchase meaningful items for patients and fill urgent needs for patient families and the hospital, especially during the holiday season. With your help, parents and caregivers will be able to focus on what matters most: helping their child heal.
We sincerely appreciate any donation that you can make
Happy Holidays,
Love the Johnson's
