The story of Kari
The story starts as many would – a boy and girl fall in love and welcome a new life to the world. He’s perfect…8 pounds 3 ounces of big, chubby joy. A year and half goes by and everything is fine; our boy is healthy and growing faster than we could ever have imagined.
Then we get a call from daycare; he’s not breathing. His heart stopped. The days following are a blur; from “we don’t know what’s wrong with him” to “he needs to be flight for lifed to the Children’s Hospital cardiac unit”. Official diagnosis: Long QT Syndrome. It’s a congenital heart arrhythmia that effects 1 in 7000. At 19 months old, our perfect little boy went through 2 surgeries in 3 days to put in a ICD/pacemaker. 12 days in the cardiac ICU…not knowing why or how or what was happening. Fast forward to Christmas day. We aren’t expecting anything different from the days prior…he won’t wake up…he’s stuck on the breathing machine… And then it happens. Our little boy opened up his eyes and starts fighting the breathing machine; he’s breathing on his own. On January 2nd, 2016 we finally were released from the hospital and we got to go home. Now our Christmas miracle is back at school, just like before, with a slightly modified heart. And we’re going to keep having Christmas miracles for many many years to come.