Grace Heady

Grace is a silly, brave, amazing four-year-old little girl living with a critical congenital heart defect (CHD). Grace has a single ventricle heart, and her diagnosis falls under the Hypoplastic Right Heart Syndrome (HRHS) umbrella. Simply put, this means that her heart is unable to pump deoxygenated "blue" blood to her lungs, and subsequently, the levels of oxygen in her blood/body are impacted. 

Due to amazing advances in research and care, Grace is a candidate for a series of heart procedures/surgeries to allow her body to function with "half a heart." In her first year of life, she had a PDA stent placed via cardiac catheterization, a Bi-Directional Glenn open-heart surgery, countless echocardiograms, EKGs, ultrasounds, X-rays, blood draws, CT scans, IVs/arterial lines placed, Holter monitoring, etc, etc, etc. She has remained beautifully stable since her Glenn surgery in the summer of 2022, and we are now preparing for her Fontan open-heart surgery this summer.

We are continuously thankful for the amazing folks in the CHD community - families who have walked this road before us and with us, members of cardiology care teams who have made it their lives' work to care for patients with CHDs, researchers advancing outcomes for CHD patients, and every one of you who is reading this and learning with us as we share about congenital heart defects.

Thank you for considering donating to The Children's Heart Foundation. We feel so strongly that they are doing so much GOOD for the CHD community, and we are very excited about the research they are supporting and it's potential impacts on Grace's future. We are so proud of her and proud to help their mission.

The Children's Heart Foundation was founded in 1996 and is the country's leading organization solely dedicated to funding congenital heart defect (CHD) research. 

Our mission is to advance the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of congenital heart defects by funding the most promising research.