COTA for Savannah's Story

Our Story

Savannah is the daughter of Derrick and Alexa, and baby sister to Sawyer. She was born February 2, 2020. When Alexa was 19 weeks pregnant with Savannah, she and Derrick went to their routine anatomy ultrasound appointment. What was supposed to be a happy day to check on their little girl’s growth and to find out the gender, turned sad when the ultrasound tech detected an abnormality in Savannah’s heart. The doctor told them they needed to go to the Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, nearly 3 hours from home, to have an Echocardiogram done (a test that shows the heart’s blood flow) to determine the severity of the situation.  November 1, 2019, the doctors completed the Echo and it showed that she was missing the Tricuspid and Pulmonary valve in her heart. This meant that she would have to have at least three surgeries between birth and 3 years old (Shunt, Glenn operation, and Fontan procedure). This was very painful news for the parents to hear of course. No parent wants to hear that his/her baby is going to need so many surgeries and have to live with congenital heart defects. They were hopeful though because the odds for success were great with these surgeries. 

At 3:30 in the morning on February 2nd, Alexa’s water broke. Since this was a high risk pregnancy and the hospital was nearly 3 hours away, Alexa was airlifted to UAMS to give birth to Savannah via Cesarean section. Afterwards, Savannah was taken to Arkansas Children’s Hospital so the doctors there could start treatment to keep baby Savannah alive. This included medicine called Prostaglandin to keep the blood vessel that is connected to the two major arteries open to continue blood flow to her lungs. At 3 days old Savannah underwent a cardiac catheterization – a procedure that involves running a line from the groin into the heart in order to get a better look at the heart’s vessels, valves, and chambers. This procedure showed that Savannah’s heart was actually worse than they had originally thought and her coronary arteries were not where they were supposed to be. Savannah was going to need a heart transplant. She was also going to need to be sedated and paralyzed until after her surgery, because being awake was becoming too stressful on her already sick heart. Even though she has been through so much already, she has the love of her family and the knowledge from doctors to help her make it through this tough part of her life.  

February 13, 2020, after over a week of labs and tests, Savannah was placed on the Transplant list.

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.