On January 18, 2022, Luca Azul Flores was born. In less than a month, we unexpectedly discovered that Luca was born with Congenital Heart Disease. His severe heart defects led to his first surgery, placement of a pulmonary artery band at only 1 month old and a second surgery to place a gastronomy tube 3 weeks later. Luca ended up getting infections from each surgery. While Luca is incredibly strong and is doing his best to recover, he has also developed Necrotizing Enterocolitis, Rhino/Enterovirus, Bilateral Hip Dysplasia, Enterococcus Faecalis (bacterial infection in his bloodstream) and small cysts in his choroid plexus (brain), along with Feeding Intolerances.

Luca has been at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) in the Cardio-Thoracic ICU for about 3 months now. However, this is an ongoing process and he still has more surgeries to go (Open-heart correction surgeries). At this time, I have not gone home since being in the hospital or have been able to go back to work since he was born. While our main priority is for Luca to recover and move forward to live a healthy and happy lifestyle beside his older sister Olivia (2 years old), the added stress of medical bills and living expenses has also become extremely overwhelming.

Please, if you could spare any donations to help us through this process, it would be greatly appreciated. We don’t know what we would do without the countless support from our family and friends. Your thoughts and prayers have been incredibly helpful during this difficult process, and we are genuinely thankful for each and every one of you.