This is Ava Marie's Story

The girls were born March 21, 2011. Kaylie is the older twin, being born at 4:01 PM and was 5 lbs, 6 oz and 18 1/2 inches long. Ava was born at 4:02 PM and was 4 lbs, 6 oz and 16 1/2 inches long. Kaylie is progressing fine, hitting all of her milestones. Ava is still in the hospital and will be throughout the rest of her wait until her next surgery, which SHOULD be when she is 6 months old, which is only two months away. There is now rumor that they want her also to be 5 kilos (approx. 11 pounds)... which is going to be hard since she has been on IV fluids for the past week, with no end in sight. Her belly bloated so they are waiting for all that fluid to release before putting her back on feeds. She will eventually be a single ventricle heart, basically castrating the entire right side of the heart. It will be a total of 3 surgeries with the third and final being done around 2 to 4 years old. Her medical prognosis in an enlarged heart with a tricuspid regurgitation, tricuspid valve atresia, pulmonary atresion, and an ill-formed pulmonary artery. Her next step surgery will sew off the tricuspid which will ease the regurgitation and so hopefully reduse the size of the heart. Her pulmonary artery was already tied off in the previous surgery. With a smaller heart, this will ease the amount of pressure on her lungs. Since she wasn't able to be weaned from the ventilator, she was given a tracheostomy. She is doing okay with it. She has difficulties maintaining her Oxygen levels in her blood. She also pulls tricks with her heart rhythms. They call it bradycardia, PVCs, and SVTs. She is basically dropping heart rate sometimes dangerously low or skipping beats. The girls use MIke's last name which is Vincent. Her webpage is www.carepages.com/carepages/vincentavamarie. I do updates, usually every other day. Which, I have to go update that now...

Please meet Ava and her family by clicking here and learn more how you can help.

God bless you all and please pass it on this site so others can understand that there are others out there working hard and not just asking for all to be given in a plate to them.

Sincerely,

Edson Andrade