Through the Art for Heart Open Your Heart Campaign, we are Saving Little Hearts in South Alabama by working to provide comprehensive infant CPR education and training resources to local hospitals. These resources will address this gap in training for parents during the pandemic period. These CPR training resources will train more than just newborn parents. Siblings, grandparents, and other caretakers will also have access to these critical skills, magnifying the impact of this project. We want every new parent to know exactly what to do to save a child’s life. With your help, we’ll provide education and resources to as many parents as possible through local. It’s a monumental undertaking with a goal of $50,000, but it’s one well worth pursuing. Please open your heart once again for us today with a donation that will help us provide this life-saving gift to parents on the Alabama Gulf Coast. Take a look at one of our little heart heroes, Grady.
Grady’s heart condition is called Ebstein’s Anomaly of the tricuspid valve with an atrial septal defect. It wasn’t found until his one-month checkup. A nurse in delivery thought she heard a murmur, but the doctor passed it off.
However, at his checkup, his primary doctor expressed concern for the murmur. Grady was examined by a specialist. They said that Grady could experience “failure to thrive” due to his condition, so a surgery was scheduled for when he was around 4 months old.
Grady’s growth surpassed the expectations of his caregivers, so his surgery was postponed until he was 6 months old. At that 6-month mark, he was still growing instead of failing to thrive. At 9 months, Grady was still thriving.
Eventually, doctors elected to perform the surgery 5 days after his 1st birthday on January 5, 2016. The surgery to repair the atrial septal defect and mend the tricuspid and mitral valves went well. Though doctors weren’t able to make a full repair on the tricuspid, the results have been positive.
“Praise be to God, Grady is crushing it!” said his mother. “We are now only doing yearly checkups at the cardiologist and they said that he has no limitations!”
The Open Your Heart Campaign is a year-round giving campaign that provides critical funding for our mission to support awareness efforts and cutting-edge research related to cardiovascular health and stroke. Everyone needs a healthy heart, healthy brain, and to be armed with the resources they need to fight their number one health threat.
The dollars we raise through Open Your Heart will be used to fund lifesaving research, support health and education initiatives in our community, improve the quality of care in our hospitals, advocate for healthy policies, and so much more.
Together, we can change lives and save lives!
