Ellie’s heart adventure

Ellie was diagnosed with Dilated Cardiomyopathy at the age of seven. That’s a big fancy word that means heart failure. Now here we are, 3 years later. Ellie had her annual cath lab testing to check up on the state of her heart last month. The results came back indicating that it’s time to start moving forward with a heart transplant. Basically, her medications aren’t mitigating her condition any longer and is in turn creating some new, potentially long term problems if something isn’t done about it. We had a virtual evaluation with the team of pediatric cardiologists that have been involved in her care at Stanford on Thursday and they want to start the testing, placement, and transplant process within the next two weeks, asking us to be in Palo Alto, CA with Ellie as soon as Thursday this coming week. It seems that it’s become urgent that Ellie gets a new heart. From what they have told us we could be in California for quite a while. Possibly 6 months depending on organ availability and compatibility and recovery process. There is a potential that Ellie may be able to receive care in Seattle, which is out of network for us, as opposed to Palo Alto, but we aren’t certain yet. Either way, we have a long, uncharted road ahead of us. 

Any support to keep our homes and lives a float here in Oregon is greatly appreciated. ❤️