During a 34 week ultrasound, Alyssa and Ray experienced a horrible surprise as they were told baby Xander had critical aortic stenosis, a congenital heart defect that was inherited through Alyssa’s family. They were then immediately sent to Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital and within an hour they were seen by the top pediatric cardiologists. They were told once the baby was born, the doctors would perform a balloon valvuloplasty which is a tiny catheter inserted in Xander’s heart that helps expand his narrow aortic valve to allow more blood flow to the body. Due to the narrow aortic valve in the womb, the only set backs were that his left ventricle and mitral valve were overworked and severely damaged as well.
Alyssa spent 2 weeks on a high risk obstetric floor to monitor Xander closely. He proved to be a stubborn boy and began having decelerations, so it was decided May 3rd that Alyssa would undergo a C-section the following morning. On May 4, 2018 at 11:36AM their beautiful baby boy had finally arrived at 8 lbs and 11 ounces, 22 inches long. The couple only had merely 30 seconds to see and not even touch their bundle of joy as he was immediately rushed to NICU.
Xander underwent his procedure with much hope from the cardiologists that it would be successful. Sadly, there was no improvement with his aortic stenosis and after a few weeks Xander began to have a larger left ventricle and mitral valve regurgitation. After seven weeks, Xander was decompensating having respiratory issues and bradycardia. The poor baby had gotten so bad that they had to do compressions and intubate him in order to stay alive.
Luckily, he was placed on the transplant list on June 21, 2018 and the doctors said he is a lot more stable since being intubated.
Xander has made strides to recover from his severe heart failure with help from medications, respiratory therapists, a nasal feeding tube, the wonderful doctors and nurses, and huge prayers from all their family and friends. He will continued to stay in the Pediatric CVICU at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital until he received his beautiful new heart on September 26th. The family was discharge on October 18th and have been home working on Xander’s development therapy and following up at his heart appointments.
Please help mom and dad raise money to fund Xander’s heart treatments. Even with insurance coverage and a lot of courage to ask for help from his parents, Xander’s path to recovery and care will be long and expensive which are not all covered by insurance. In additon, they will have to meet with several doctors for the rest of Xander’s life. Please help raise money for these parents to take away the financial stress and burden while dealing with this.
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Thank you for your support! We LOVE you all and appreciate the support and care you have provided to our family. God bless!!
