Jaxson's Second Open Heart Surgery

“Sometimes, real superheroes live in the hearts of small children fighting bigger battles.”

In just 4 days, 7:00am Wednesday August 29th our baby boy Jaxson will be having his second open heart surgery at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford.

Our sweet Jaxson was born on April 29th, 2021 without a pulmonary valve in his heart and many other complications we were not prepared for. He was airlifted to Stanford Hospital where he underwent his first open heart surgery at just 3 weeks old.

Jaxson’s diagnosis is Tetralogy of Fallot, Pulmonary Atresia & Pulmonary Hypertension. In simpler terms- he had a hole in his heart in the bottom, two chambers that mixed his red and blue oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, and there was no passageway for the oxygenated blood to reach the body because his heart did not form a valve. That is why Jaxson has an artificial valve that needs to be replaced every few years with open-heart surgery because it doesn’t grow with him as he ages. His lung problems arose later on around six months old, where we discovered he has compressed airways in both lungs causing extremely high pressures, making it harder for him to breathe and hospitalizing him every time he gets sick.

Jaxson has been on mandatory oxygen since he was 6 months old and has been on a feeding tube since the day he was born. This next surgery they will be replacing his pulmonary valve again as well as alleviating the pressure that is currently compressing his lungs. The goal is that Jaxson will no longer need the help of oxygen on a day to day basis!

Haley and Chris desperately need financial assistance since they both have to take off work all of a sudden to go be with Jaxson for the next 8 weeks. They have been on the Ronald McDonald Housing waiting list for a year now but most resources like this have long waitlists and cannot accommodate them so they have to pay out of pocket for hotels while they are at Stanford. This surgery was originally planned for February 22nd and they dropped everything to go up to Stanford but Jaxson came down with RSV so they were sent home and told they had to just wait for the phone call (no idea when or how long) for them to come back up for surgery.

(Update:) This is our third time being rescheduled so we are hopeful everything goes as planned. We are told we could be there 6-8 weeks and have booked a hotel for the first two nights but no set accommodations after as we are still on the waiting list for Ronald McDonald House.

Your generous donations will go towards all of Jaxson’s medical costs, weekly therapy costs, transportation to Stanford, housing, food, and any and all accommodation required for before, during, and post surgery recovery. Post recovery we are hoping Jaxson will not need to have another heart surgery for 4-5 more years!

Haley, Chris, and Jaxson appreciate any and all donations, loving words, and prayers during this difficult and trying time.

Please help our little heart warrior!

“The strongest hearts have the most scars.”

WITH ALL OUR LOVE,

Kerry McMenamin and Clark Deremo