Memorial for McKenna

Thank you so much for taking time to visit and learn about McKenna’s story. McKenna Kim Bennett was born on 6/11/2020 and was dubbed a unicorn baby. Some people call them rainbow babies. She was different. Unique. Beautiful. She was a very happy baby. She never cried. Her eyes when they looked at you were like looking and connecting to your soul. She didn’t like being alone for more than a second. She would just yell for you to come back. Some nights she wouldn’t even sleep without you next to her. She was a cuddler and loved to be with mommy and daddy. One of the most amazing things about her is that she was born with Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome). That was part of who she was and we would not have changed that about her. We loved that about her. She was perfect. Just how she was. The second thing about her is that she was born with CHD. She had two awful conditions that balanced each other at first, but then didn’t. The first and biggest was her AVSD, the second defect that put her in the hospital was TOF. McKenna’s hospital journey was unexpected and went the worst possible way it could. She had a clinic visit three weeks ago for a echo and check up. Her blood oxygen level came back low. Her echo came back abnormal than what it had before. Her TOF had gotten even thicker and she wasn’t getting oxygenated blood to her lungs. She was given oxygen and it didn’t help. We were admitted to the hospital from the ER. That is when she had her first TET spell ever. We got all her points of entry in that they needed and were sent up to PICU. For the two days that followed we were good. They were monitoring her until they scheduled surgery that following Friday. McKenna had other plans. She was eating normally and resting a lot. The medicine they were giving her to bring her heart rate down only increased it. While she was sleeping her blood oxygen dropped into the 40’s and they got it back to the 70’s. It wouldn’t go any higher. That weekend they decided sedation and a paralytic was the best option. We were then admitted to CVICU. Open heart surgery was then moved to Monday. She was getting a shunt instead of a stint. So it really progressed quickly. We went through surgery and she did really well. The following couple days they were treating her with fluids, lasix, and she accepted it really well. They closed her chest. She was dealing with some withdrawals from fentanyl. They were treating that and making her comfortable. That weekend she suffered arrest. The doctors had to perform cpr for quite some time and we were super concerned about that. The next day she was finger squeezing and looked so tired. No one could tell us what happened. Then the worse thing that could happen. Did. Her little brain started to swell. We lost all movement and consciousness. She wasn’t on any medication for sedation or pain. She was in a coma. The next several days we did EEG, ultrasounds, physical exams. None of which came back good. We thought if we gave her time for the swelling to go down we might get a miracle. But we didn’t. The head doctor found out that the lasix worked to well for McKenna. She was peeing a lot. She suffered from dehydration and her electrolytes affected her heart. If they stopped it, she would have suffered congestive heart failure. So we loved her as much as we could. Read to her. Until the day she showed us that she couldn’t handle it anymore. Two and a half weeks this little heart baby fought and we were right there with her. The final scan was on her brain stem. She couldn’t breath on her own. Even with the CO2 test. Which is basically an involuntary response by the body and brain to breath. They declared brain death at 9:08 Sunday morning. She started declining around 3 that same day. McKenna was no longer there. But she is. She’s always here with us. We miss and love our little one so much. She was 2 months and 20 days old. I’ve been asked by several people how they can help with medical, bills, food, etc. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read my heart warriors story. She will forever be my love, my hero. If you can monetarily support anything during this difficult time, it is appreciated. Prayers, well wishes, and love are also all 100% appreciated as well. Thank you so much, again.