Juliette was born a healthy baby girl. But just at 2 weeks old, we noticed she was breathing a little faster than normal. She had a doctor’s appointment and we mentioned her breathing and were just told it’s likely she has her 1st cold. It was winter, and there was a lot of sickness going around so we thought nothing of it. She didn’t seem bothered by it. Weeks go by and Juliette’s breathing didn’t seem to get any better, but she wasn’t “worsening” so all we could do was watch. As the weeks and months went by, she kept getting sick. We took her to the ER 4 times and each time she got x-rays done. In those months she got rhino virus, a corona virus, and then croup. Every time they would just pay attention to her lungs and we were always told to suction her nose. On May 11th, our 4th and last trip to the ER, she had been crying all day and wouldn’t eat. She also stopped breathing several times. We stayed overnight because they were concerned for SIDS. Other than that, they thought she looked healthy. She had an x-ray that night and we were told everything looked good. The next day, the doctor took a 2nd look and a 3rd look at the x-ray and called a specialist at Children’s. He was told to do an echo of her heart. That’s where they saw her heart was “massive” and her ejection fraction on the left ventricle was around 5-8%. Basically, her left side wasn’t pumping barely any blood. Juliette was diagnosed with Dilated Cardiomyopathy. Our sweet baby was in heart failure and we didn’t even know it. We were flown to Children’s that day. Less than 48 hours later, Juliette went into cardiac arrest. Thankfully she was resuscitated! She was put on ECMO after that. Then hours later she had another surgery to basically poke a small hole in her heart. 3 days later, she had a stroke on the left side of her brain and a hemorrhage… this affected her right extremities. She was on ECMO for 16 days. She was able to get off of it because her EF had improved and went up to around 23%! She was off for a week and in that week she got on the transplant list! Even though her EF had gone up, Juliette’s heart was starting to struggle again. She had to have an open-heart surgery to get a VAD in her left ventricle which does the work of the left side of her heart. The VAD has allowed her to be stable and allowed her to have a little more “normalcy” and focus on meeting her next milestones and getting stronger.

The Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) helps children and young adults who need a life-saving transplant by providing fundraising assistance and family support. COTA is the nation’s only fundraising organization solely dedicated to raising life-saving dollars in honor of transplant-needy children and young adults. 100% of each contribution made to COTA in honor of our patients helps meet transplant-related expenses. COTA’s services are free to our families, and gifts to COTA are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.