Our beautiful boy, Hank, was born into this world April 23, 2013 (a solid 4 days PAST his due date!) with an undiagnosed congenital heart defect.  He was born into a room full of love, hope, joy, smiles, and laughter.  Hank’s nurses noticed right away that he wasn’t transitioning very well to life “on the outside” and escalated his care immediately.  After a short but very hard fought battle by the nurses, doctors, prayer warriors and Hank himself, Hank entered Jesus’s arms a few hours later.  Our world was shattered and forever changed.  

We were directed to the Children’s Heart Foundation as a resource to learn more about his heart defect and about this amazing network of people dedicated to congenital heart defect awareness, education, and research.  We learned more about his condition, Transposition of the Great Arteries (TGA), and how his heart circulated his blood supply in two separate loops.  One loop sent blood from his heart to his body and back, and the other loop sent blood to his lungs and back-which meant that oxygenated blood wasn’t being sent to his body and brain.  We also learned that TGA isn’t known as an immediately fatal defect because it’s usually seen with other heart defects that allow partial mixing of oxygenated blood inside the heart.  Sadly, Hank’s heart had no other defects to allow for blood mixing to buy us more time for heart surgery.  Hank’s life may have been immensely shorter than we wanted, but I am determined that his life will continue to have purpose and his ripple to reach further and further to create good in this world. 

I am so grateful for The Children’s Heart Foundation for educating us about Hank’s heart defect and providing us an opportunity to support other families affected by heart defects.  We’ve donated money to them as a family, we have friends who continue to donate in Hank's memory every year on his birthday, and I even ran my first half marathon as a fundraiser for the foundation.   I can’t think of a better cause to raise money for, I’d love to think that some of the dollars I raise will help at least one family avoid the earth-shattering grief that we’ve experienced or help them continue on despite it.  While there are many large heart foundations that publicly raise a lot of money and heart disease awareness, they tend to focus only on adult heart conditions and acquired diseases.  Children’s Heart Foundation is the country’s leading organization dedicated to solely researching congenital heart defects to improve diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.  This foundation holds a very special place in my heart and always will.