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This is my precious baby granddaughter and the story below comes directly from the person that can explain Fay’s condition the best; her daddy, David Traylor:
Baby Fay came into this world with a rather large hole in her heart. It's called VSD (ventricular septal defect). In Fay's case, her hole is large enough that she only had a couple of weeks of "normal" before her symptoms started. The hole allows oxygen-rich blood to get pumped back into her lungs instead of out to the body, causing her heart to work much harder. She sweats, water collects in her lungs, she breathes faster and she's squarely in what doctors call congestive heart failure. Because of the size and location of the hole, Fay has to get bigger for surgical repair to be safe and complete. Instead, a stopgap surgery to install a restrictive band around her aorta will be performed. This will increase the pressure in her heart so the moving blood stays moving and has less opportunity to swirl into adjacent chambers. It's an incomplete and temporary measure. If successful, another open heart surgery will be needed to repair the hole in 8 to 12 months.
The first surgery, the band surgery, will happen Tuesday, February 11th.
Many of you, most of you, have been praying for Fay and us. We greatly appreciate that and believe in the power of community and prayer. It's pulling our family through. It's a hard thing to ask for help. It hurts, in fact. I'm a lawyer so everybody thinks I'm supposed to be rich. Cynthia's an actress so until she "hits it big" or "catches her lucky break" she's supposed to be broke. Together we manage to make it. In fact, Cynthia worked enough last year to qualify for the excellent SAG (Screen Actor's Guild) insurance and that's been a lifesaver. But it's tough to maintain that insurance while pregnant. Roles for pregnant women are scarce and the ability to work is greatly compromised by being the strains of being pregnant. So, she didn't work enough this past year to keep coverage and we will lose it at the end of March. (Ironically, SAG has recently voted to lower income requirements during pregnancy, but the change comes too late for us).
We've been pushing through all the physical demands of caring for Fay, including staying up nights in shifts to feed her through her feeding tube, medicate her, burp her, change her diapers and comfort her. We've been blasting through the medical bills, too. But they are already more than we can pay and are about to start coming so hard and fast they will swallow all our efforts to keep up. So, reluctantly, after many friends suggested it, we agreed to a Go-Fund Me account to help. They didn't feel they knew how to best word the description so they asked me to do it. So, here I am...asking for help.
No amount is too small in the greater picture. Whether you donate or not please share it.
We are only asking for an amount we're confident will be needed. If the amount balloons (which it likely will) we may adjust this campaign or start a new one. But for now we're trying to keep it reasonable.
Baby Fay came into this world with a rather large hole in her heart. It's called VSD (ventricular septal defect). In Fay's case, her hole is large enough that she only had a couple of weeks of "normal" before her symptoms started. The hole allows oxygen-rich blood to get pumped back into her lungs instead of out to the body, causing her heart to work much harder. She sweats, water collects in her lungs, she breathes faster and she's squarely in what doctors call congestive heart failure. Because of the size and location of the hole, Fay has to get bigger for surgical repair to be safe and complete. Instead, a stopgap surgery to install a restrictive band around her aorta will be performed. This will increase the pressure in her heart so the moving blood stays moving and has less opportunity to swirl into adjacent chambers. It's an incomplete and temporary measure. If successful, another open heart surgery will be needed to repair the hole in 8 to 12 months.
The first surgery, the band surgery, will happen Tuesday, February 11th.
Many of you, most of you, have been praying for Fay and us. We greatly appreciate that and believe in the power of community and prayer. It's pulling our family through. It's a hard thing to ask for help. It hurts, in fact. I'm a lawyer so everybody thinks I'm supposed to be rich. Cynthia's an actress so until she "hits it big" or "catches her lucky break" she's supposed to be broke. Together we manage to make it. In fact, Cynthia worked enough last year to qualify for the excellent SAG (Screen Actor's Guild) insurance and that's been a lifesaver. But it's tough to maintain that insurance while pregnant. Roles for pregnant women are scarce and the ability to work is greatly compromised by being the strains of being pregnant. So, she didn't work enough this past year to keep coverage and we will lose it at the end of March. (Ironically, SAG has recently voted to lower income requirements during pregnancy, but the change comes too late for us).
We've been pushing through all the physical demands of caring for Fay, including staying up nights in shifts to feed her through her feeding tube, medicate her, burp her, change her diapers and comfort her. We've been blasting through the medical bills, too. But they are already more than we can pay and are about to start coming so hard and fast they will swallow all our efforts to keep up. So, reluctantly, after many friends suggested it, we agreed to a Go-Fund Me account to help. They didn't feel they knew how to best word the description so they asked me to do it. So, here I am...asking for help.
No amount is too small in the greater picture. Whether you donate or not please share it.
We are only asking for an amount we're confident will be needed. If the amount balloons (which it likely will) we may adjust this campaign or start a new one. But for now we're trying to keep it reasonable.