Emmet’s HLHS Journey

On January 5th Dalton and Hailey welcomed their little baby boy, Emmet, into this world. At their 20 week ultrasound, Emmet was diagnosed with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), a deformity to the left side of his heart.

Emmet will be going through a series of open heart surgeries over the next 3-5 years. The first surgery took place when Emmet was just 9 days old. He sent a total of 41 day in the hospital after birth. On February 14 they were finally able to take their little guy home. Emmet did wonderful at home. He was hitting all his milestones. His heart was doing wonderful. He was like a ‘normal’ baby. 

Emmet’s second surgery was scheduled for June 9th. Before his second surgery, he would have to go in for a heart cath procedure. This is where they insert a catheter into a vein in the groin and feed a camera up to his heart to take pictures and check pressures. Emmet was admitted on May 5th for his heart cath. Typically he would only have to stay over night then be discharged the next day. 

However, Emmet had a lot of complications after his heart cath. He was not able to come off of oxygen and his team decided it was time for the second surgery. On May 12th, Emmet had his surgery. His surgery went well. After surgery he continued to have multiple complications. They attempted to remove his breathing tube 4 times but each time failed. They found he had an upper airway infection. Once the infection was gone he was able to have to breathing tube removed successfully. Unfortunately after that, his doctors found that one of the nerves in his chest, that controls his diaphragm, was damaged during surgery and his diaphragm was not working correctly. He went into surgery to have that repaired. Then he ended up having air accumulate in his chest, putting so much pressure on his lung that it was causing the lung to collapse. Luckily they were able to fix this as well. Everything was looking good and Emmet was home bound, until 3 days before their discharge date. Emmet ended up with another infection.

Unfortunately Emmet has had complication after complication. What was suppose to be a one night stay, turned into a two week stay to have his surgery. That two week stay has turned into a 6+ week stay. Dalton and Hailey have not left his side through any of it. This also means that neither of them have worked in 6+ weeks. Please know that any donations will be used for day to day bills, food, and eventually hospital bills. They are both thankful for all the support so far!