Donate to help Brendan Walker's family

My name is Jen Conway and I am asking for help for a childhood friend. Laurie Sanchez, as she was known then, was a big part of my childhood. We lived close to eachother growing up and some of my best childhood memories were with her. Her young son, Brendan, has already faced so many challenges in his short life. Please read about him and donate if you can. This little family could really use all of our help. Here's a little more information about Brendan.

Brendan Walker is an amazing and resilient 7 year old boy. He was born with several congenital heart defects and is missing his right ventricle. He also has many other medical complications. He has had 22 surgeries so far.

On April 8th Brendan suffered an over hour long seizure that put him in the emergency room at Phoenix Children’s hospital. Brendan does have epilepsy but his seizures have been really well maintained by his medication. At the ER his medications were adjusted and he was sent home. A few days later Brendan and his mom, Laurie, both ended up with a horrible stomach virus. A few days after that Brendan ended back in the hospital for stomach issues and ended spending 5 days in the hospital.

Brendan never really recovered from the stomach issues and ended up back in the hospital on May 8th. A few days after his admittance to the hospital the doctors decided to do an echocardiogram just to make sure his stomach issues weren’t heart related. It was found Brendan was in heart failure and had to be transferred to the Cardiac ICU immediately.

Once more testing was done, the cardiac team decided Brendan needed a heart catheterization to determine how his heart was functioning, tune up some things and take some measurements. This is a very routine procedure in the cardiac world and no complications were expected. On Tuesday May 16th Brendan went in for a heart catheterization around 3pm. During the heart cath something went wrong that the doctors still aren’t sure of. He came back to the room with a breathing tube in a fully sedated. They could tell from the monitors that his heart function was decreasing.

Around 10pm that night the attending doctor ordered an echocardiogram to see in real time how the heart was functioning. Something told that doctor to stand there and watch the echo live opposed to just reading the results afterwards like is normally done. As the doctor was standing there watching the echo she saw Brendan’s heart struggling harder and harder to squeeze and his blood pressure go to essentially zero. The doctor acted quickly and hit the code button and administered a huge does of medication to get his blood pressure to come back up.

The team decided Brendan was too sick at the moment and he was put on a life support machine to take the strain off his heart and lungs. He was the sickest child on the entire cardiac floor at that time.

The quick thinking of this doctor saved Brendan’s life. Since then he has made huge strides by coming off the life support and getting the breathing tube out. He still has a long road to recovery and they don’t know if there will be any long term damage from having to go on the life support machine.

Brendan’s parents, Laurie and Matt, both are still working full time as the bills don’t stop. Laurie has been able to work from the hospital and Matt goes back and forth between work, the hospital and home. Brendan also has a 15 year old brother, Colby, who is missing him terribly.

Laurie put in her notice at her current job and has another job lined up but due to all of Brendan’s complications she has delayed her start date in order to take care of Brendan so she will be without an income for several weeks.

Even though Brendan has good insurance, there are expenses insurance doesn’t cover such as copays, meals, gas and more. It is unknown what kind of care Brendan will need once he returns home and the doctors expect him to remain in the hospital for at least another week or two.