Baby Gwen's Heart of Gold

On March 1st, 2019, Gwen Helen Kaminski was born to proud, loving parents Eric and Mandy Kaminski.  Gwen also made their first born daughter, Rosie, a new big sister. Within one day of her birth, her oxygen saturation was staying too low and they were unable to get her off of supplemental oxygen. More work up commenced with the doctors at a small community hospital where Mandy had a routine scheduled C-section.  The news that was delivered to them next was something that every parent to a newborn would dread to hear. Gwen's heart was  congenitally deformed and would require transfer to a different hospital for further testing and possible surgery by a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon. Eric and Mandy watched their newborn baby girl get transferred to the University of Minnesota, the hospital that was able to provide the higher level of care that Gwen needed (despite Mandy remaining admitted as she just had surgery herself). After the proper testing at the University of Minnesota, their beautiful baby girl was diagnosed with multiple congenital heart defects that required urgent medical treatment and surgery. In laymen's terms, the two main blood vessels which carry the blood away from the heart after the heart pumps were switched, she had a hole in the heart between the two ventricles which pump blood to both the lungs and the body, and lastly, the opening (valve) from the heart into the lungs ware not formed correctly which caused a blockage of blood flowing to her lung. Within the first 5 days of her life, she required to have a surgery that allowed the blood flow from her heart into her lungs. It was an open heart, 8 hour surgery that didn't go as well as the surgeon had planned, but the end result was very acceptable and, to the surgeon, wouldn't have any long term ill-effects in the later surgeries that were planned for her heart. Within a few hours of her first surgery, Gwen had become hypotensive due to a bleed around the heart which needed to be corrected surgically, again. These two surgeries left her chest opened, sedated on the ventilator and being fed through a tube going through her nose into her stomach. Thankfully, that surgery was successful until her third procedure which was to close her open chest. Due to the medications that Gwen was receiving to help with the swelling after the first surgery, it caused her heart to stop and she needed to be resuscitated. Since being resuscitated, Gwen has been recovering in the pediatric intensive of care unit where they found a small grade one intracranial hemorrhage (bleed in the brain) that the doctors are monitoring closely, but do not think it will have any great effect on her overall recovery. To date (3/17/19), she is still on the ventilator trying to wean off and be extubated soon. This fundraising site was created to give Gwen and her parents one less thing to worry about while she is fighting for her life in the hospital. Given that this condition is a chronic condition for Gwen, she will require multiple follow-up doctor's appointments, medications, imaging procedures and surgeries in the future, possibly even including a heart transplant. The money would go toward helping Gwen and her family get through this rough time as medical bills and mortgages do not stop for unmitigated critical illness. THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION AND PRAYERS FOR THE KAMINSKI FAMILY ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️   

Disclaimer: this fundraiser was created by myself, Steven Rogers, a life-long best friend of Gwen's father, Eric Kaminski; Along with his wife, Mandy, they are the sole beneficiaries of all the donated money to help pay for the medical costs associated with Gwen's treatment. All funds were directly deposited to Eric's bank account since GoFundMe started releasing monetary donations as he (and Mandy) are the direct beneficiaries of this fundraiser on the behalf of their daughter, Gwen.