A Melody to Mend My Heart

This is our first and only child, Kenna Jane. As if being a first time parent isn't scary enough, our sweet baby was diagnosed with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. A very serious congenital heart defect that basically means the left side of her heart did not develope completely. When we first discovered the news we were devastated for our baby girl. We had no idea what our future had in store. Kenna had her first open heart surgery when she was only 6 weeks old.(Shout out to Levine Childrens Hospital and the Ronald McDonald House of Charlotte, NC) They repaired her mitral valve. To our suprise she had a fast recovery and was sent home in the care of her father and I within a week! After countless doctors and nurses in and out every five minutes, tests, tubes, wires, monitors ect. she only had us. Talking about a nervous wreck! Of course she had follow up visits at Asheville cardiology and check ups which is how we came to realize the repair wasn't exactly working. She continues to have trouble breathing but to look at Kenna you could never tell she has anything wrong with her. She's always happy and smiling, just taking it all in. After numerous doctor consultations and phone calls, we discovered that Kenna is a canidate for a new procedure that will fix her mitral valve and reduce the need for future open heart surgeries. It is called a Melody valve, below is a link that explains it much better than I would be able to. However, since its very new technology, only 10 kids have it so far, all of her procedures will require us to be in Boston. Kenna is now almost five months old and in just a week we will begin the next part of our journey to Boston Children's Hospital. As i'm sure you can imagine we have outrageous medical bills, and they are only going to get worse. Any help, prayers, and encouragement we can get will be greatly appriciated. FOR THOSE OF YOU THAT WOULD LIKE TO HELP, BUT DO NOT WANT TO GO THROUGH A WEBSITE, we set up an account for Kenna at State Employees Credit Union under Kenna Jane Aldridge! Thank you for taking the time to read our story!

http://childrenshospital.org/newsroom/Site1339/mainpageS1339P908.html