Hi, my name is Jeremiah and I'm the father of two beautiful teenagers. Ezra 15 and Ollie 17. We're kind and loving people ❤️.

The goal isn't the focus, anything helps, can you donate maybe $5? We don't want to put anyone out, we know times are tough for everyone. The plan is to use donations to help with living expenses which are higher being away from home. Gas, food, catch up on bills. Anything we can we do to relieve pressure to free ourselves and our spirits to focus it on Ezzy. Medical bills are estimated in the millions and we're hoping to have them covered by CHIP, but at the time of the all starting we we're in between insurance coverage so it's pretty scary stuff.

About a month ago, my son became sick. At first, we thought it was a virus, but after a couple of weeks of monitoring, his condition was getting worse, and we feared pneumonia. We took him to the ER to get meds, and we were given devastating news that he was in heart failure. A common strain of staph had damaged his heart and given him endocarditis.

He was immediately airlifted by helicopter from our hometown of Springfield, 3 hours away, to Kansas City Mercy Children's Hospital. He was septic and in heart failure, but it felt like it was our hearts stopping.

He's such an amazing person, honor roll, an academic archer , top 10 boys in the state. Even though he was extremely healthy before, it all came crashing down in an instant.

We raced to Kansas City, scared and fearful, as he took his first flight alone, not enough fuel to take us with him. We arrived safely in KC and were met by a room of dozens of the hospital and country's top cardiologists and surgeons. It was bittersweet and fueled our fears. We were then told his aortic valve was damaged by the infection and he would require open-heart surgery at 15 years old!!!!

We were absolutely devastated . In absolute shock, we signed all the papers and tried our best not to completely break down. They told us optimally they would wait 6 weeks to destroy the active infection before surgery, but in our case, we had no choice but to move forward quickly as his risk of total heart failure was very high.

The next day they said they were taking him to surgery.

Still in shock and falling to pieces, we waited hours while he was under the knife. They prepared us for massive damage and repair and gave him only a 90% success rate. We expected a 12-16 hour procedure, but with a bit of luck, it was only a 6-hour surgery, and they only had to replace a single valve with a mechanical prosthetic.

Far from home, we've struggled every day trying to focus all of our energy on him and still manage our lives to have something to come home to. Thankfully, we had some amazing supporters to help us through, or we would have crashed. Two weeks passed in recovery, and we were set to discharge soon, only to find out yesterday that he had fluid around his heart again. They rushed him back to the ICU and inserted a drain tube. We're waiting on test results.

We could really use a little help with day-to-day expenses and to try and rebalance our financial situation while we devote our lives to his healing ❤️. Anything helps; if you can, please contribute. If you can't contribute, please share and spread.

We will post updates as we know more.

Sat 5/24 - Ezra is doing good, spirits are high, being moved out of CICU.

Sun 5/25 - They did a procedure to try and relocate the drainage tube, not sure it's working though and if not Ezra may need a surgical flush to get remaining fluid off. We really hope we don't need to go back under the knife. We're staying strong but we're so beyond exausted each step is agonizing.

Mon 5/26 - Stats are better but hemoglobin was low again today. Based on fever they want to go through with flush tomorrow to clean and remove any possible contamination. If they do find a small bleed they'll repair. We're staying strong but we're also scared.