The people who work at Children's are a special breed. We have never met a provider that doesn't take incredible pride in what they do and put the patient, our son, Charlie, and his health above all else. And let's be honest - we have met a lot of people who work at Children's, in all different specialties!
I write this on the afternoon of Charlie's most recent hospital discharge. But our story actually begins even before Charlie was born. Hard to believe, but Parker, now 4.5 years old, was our first family patient here. He was ambulanced over at 1-day-old with bleeding in his brain. We will never forget the fear and confusion when we arrived and waited to see him settled in his NICU room, and the immediate comfort and reassurance we felt when speaking to the on-call Neonatologist who told us we had nothing to worry about, and actually meant it. And thankfully, was right.
When pregnant with Charlie, we never expected anything could one-up the story of Parker's birth and we joked about it often. But again, at 1-day-old, we were faced with any mom's nightmare: a diagnosis of a complicated heart defect, one that would require open heart surgery for him to survive. To look at my sleeping little boy, completely perfect on the outside, and to know what was happening inside him was anything but perfect, was a hard truth to swallow.
But because of Children's, our little man is his own form of perfect, inside and out. It's been a long journey over the last 2.5 years, and one that will continue under the care of the amazing doctors and nurses at Children's. We have a list of specialists at Children's that has grown into the double digits!
Both Parker and Charlie's health are doing well, and Bill and I realized it was time to really take care of ourselves, too, and get back into shape! Running this half-marathon on behalf of our children's health and to give back to those that have helped us get there was an obvious choice. Please support us in this effort to give health and happiness to other families like us!
