Cleveland Congenital Heart Walk

Thank you for visiting my fundraising page! I am participating in the Congenital Heart Walk to support the mission of The Children's Heart Foundation: to advance the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of congenital heart defects by funding the most promising research.

The mission of the Children's Heart Foundation is one that is very personal to me. On June 6, 2022 my little girl was born with a severe congenital heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. There is no 'cure' for this condition. The current treatment is a series of open heart surgeries to make the heart more functional, and then usually a heart transplant is needed at some point. Everly had her first major open heart surgery (the Norwood procedure) at just 5 days old. We were fortunate to have been able to have her treated at the Cleveland Clinic, as most institutions would not have even operated on her given her small size. Her surgery went beautifully and she was recovering well and on the road to being discharged home. Unfortunately, on July 9, 2022, Everly went into a vascular crisis called High Systemic Vascular Resistance leading to cardiac arrest. This is something that unfortunately can happen out of nowhere in kids with single ventricle heart conditions. The team worked on Everly for hours and truly went above and beyond to try and save her tiny life, but ultimately there was just nothing more that they could do to get her back. I am truly thankful for the care that she received and the month that I was able to spend with my precious little girl. My hope is that one day we can learn what causes these defects to occur in the first place so that we can better prevent and treat them. The Children's Heart Foundation works tirelessly to try and make this happen.

I hope you'll join me by supporting my fundraising efforts as I work to raise funds for life-saving research.