Hannah's Story

Family and friends of the Gwinner family, on April 29, Taryn and Brian lost sweet baby girl Hannah. While they navigate this heartbreakingly difficult time in their lives, their many friends and family members will be there to support and love them. This page is set up to ensure that there is a central place to provide them with financial support for medical bills, services, and other things that they may need.  Thank you so much for your kindness, generosity, love, and support.

Original post from Taryn Gwinner (Hannah's mama): In Hannah’s short 22 month life, she’s faced more challenges than anyone I know and has been so strong - such a fighter - the absolute most resilient and amazing person I have ever met. Born with a rare vascular anomaly called Abernethy Malformation that was discovered during the second half of our pregnancy and plagued us with worry and fear about the condition of our first child, we painstakingly researched to find someone who could help her and be able to avoid what most research said was an inevitable liver transplant, and were blessed with the amazing team led by Dr. Riccardo Superina at Lurie Children's in Chicago who fixed our Hannah, albeit a challenging 6 week recovery in the hospital. All of this before she turned 18 months but we did it to ensure she would have a healthy future. We were a handful of weeks away from our 6 month follow up visit when she’d no longer be required to be on blood thinners (we were religious about making Hannah wear a helmet to protect her crazy toddler head from injury) and would finally be able to get her back in daycare with her friends, even though she was in the greatest care in the entire world with her Papa, my dad Jay Levine. Until Easter Sunday when she fell suddenly ill. We thought it seemed like a virus but being nervous parents with a medically complicated child, we brought her to the ER and at first was sent home because she stopped vomiting for some time, but we quickly returned the next morning and everything changed. She had suffered a bowel obstruction from scar tissue adhesions due to her first surgery and while in the ER, her airway became compromised from large volumes of vomit and blood which put her in septic shock and cardiac arrest. She was revived but after 20 minutes of CPR which we since have come to learn has caused unrecoverable brain damage. To throw salt on the wound, she had emergency bowel surgery and while they removed 3 ft of dead bowel, the surgery was successful, but it didn’t matter. The Hannah we had just the day before is gone forever. Over the past weeks we’ve had our loved ones come visit and just sit with us as we process this loss and how we proceed into the future without our child - the most beautiful, funny, smart, strong, amazing person we’ve ever known. Somehow we’re going to have to do something no parent should ever have to endure and all we will be left with are the memories, pictures, and videos that remain.

To our Hannah Eve, I will always love you to the moon and back.

Hannah was officially pronounced dead at 8:22pm on April 29, 2019. Her body was kept on life support for an extra day because we chose to donate her organs - her kidneys, heart, and lungs are all still healthy. It’s an opportunity for Hannah to live on and also help save a few lives.