Bianca had cold hands and feet for a while, sometimes to the point where her extremities, lips, or cheeks were purple or blue. She had (what we thought) was a nagging winter cold. Nothing alarming. Her pediatrician helped to cautiously eliminate the other factors that helped lead us to where we are today without scaring us at the front. He suggested we go get a heart echocardiogram.  From there, things moved quickly, as her condition was quite obvious once the doctors had the opportunity to look at her heart, and she was given a diagnosis of restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM).
With this diagnosis, our worst nightmare as parents has come true.  Basically, she is in heart failure. The upper chambers of her heart are 3-4x larger than they should be, and her lower chambers do not relax enough to properly pump blood throughout her body. So her blood system is backing up, her other organs are strained, and blood is not quite flowing through her body as it should.
There is no cure. There is no medicine to fix it. There is no simple surgery to repair. The only option we have at this point is to go down the path the Gozola family has traveled once before; a heart transplant.

Please subscribe for updates on Bianca. 

About COTA: 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.