Support Henry's Fight Against Heart Defects

Sara and Tyler Brouillard are the most caring and loving parents I know and that is why I am asking for your help to ease the strain that recent and future medical bills for their lovely boy Henry.

Henry was diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot. (TOF) Tetralogy of Fallot is a heart defect made up of four different heart problems. There is a hole in Henry’s heart that causes his pulmonary artery to be narrow thus causing oxygen to be lacking in the blood that is pumped through his heart and body. Henry also has a vascular ring. This is a congenital defect that occurs when the aorta and its surrounding blood vessels form abnormally, encircling the trachea and esophagus. Henry was diagnosed when Sara was 20 weeks pregnant. From there she was monitored weekly by many different doctors such as high-risk doctors, cardiac doctors. They weren’t sure if she was going to be able to deliver at the Elliot. They have to deliver down in Boston, it depended on how severe his heart condition was, and if he would need his open-heart surgery right away or if it could wait until he was around three months of age. He was able to be delivered locally. He was only supposed to be monitored in the NICU, be able to come home with us, followed by cardiology outpatient with Dartmouth and then his surgery would be in Boston when it was time, but the longer Henry stayed in the NICU, he had trouble eating, he would easily get stressed out and overwhelmed with taking a bottle or being nursed and he was losing more weight than they would like so the doctors put in a feeding tube through his nose and was giving him his feeds that way so they could figure out why he wasn’t tolerating feeds by mouth. He had a swallow study done and they determined among other things that Henry was aspirating and his milk would sometimes come up and out his nose. But his doctors also saw something that was concerning the study showed that he has a hole in his esophagus because he is a cardiac patient. The local hospital would not operate on him, so Henry was transferred to Boston Children’s Hospital only four days old. At this point is no longer safe for Henry to eat anything by mouth or give him a feeding tube through the nose. Because of the risks, more tests were done, confirming the tracheal esophageal fistula. He then he underwent emergency surgery. They detect that the fistula was low on his trachea and esophagus and closer to his vascular ring. They were able to repair both ring and fistula. The surgeons were hoping this would take care of his eating problem. It did not. He was put in IV. Nutrition for another 2 weeks. Before they put in another feeding tube through his nose. Henry ended up getting a G tube places because is feeding troubles have proven to be a longer problem than we had hoped. Henry was able to come home, but not for long. He was home for 5 days when he was readmitted for blood in his stool. They discover that he has a cows milk protein allergy. He also received a blood transfusion. Then we started to notice dips in his oxygen levels. This is something that has never been an issue for Henry. He was periodically put on oxygen and we waited to be cleared by all of Henry’s specialty doctors. His cardiologist explained that this could be showing us that he will need his heart surgery sooner than anticipated. With a date set for his open-heart surgery for November 7th he has been discharged home.

Henry has been readmitted as of October 9th.

Henry is seen weekly if not multiple times a week by many of his doctors whether they’re closer to home or in Boston.

I am hoping this will help some of their medical bills, gas and possible paying for a babysitter for Maddy Mae so they can be with Henry as much as possible.