Makenzie was born on July 6, 2004 at 5:30 pm. We thought we were having a healthy baby girl. As soon as she was born the nurse made a comment about her being a little blue. They tried suctioning her and her oxygen just wouldn’t come above 91. (A normal person is 98-100) They took her to the nursery where I got to look at her but still wasn’t able to hold her because they didn’t know what was wrong with her.

The doctor came in the next day and said they had a cardiologist coming in to look at her so they could rule out something being wrong with her heart. When the cardiologist came in my room he was holding a piece of paper with a heart drawn on it, I knew at that moment something was wrong with my baby. He explained to us how a normal heart worked and then explained to us how Makenzie’s heart had formed. The last thing I remember him saying is your daughter has a heart defect called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome and she is very critical and needs open heart surgery and there is an ambulance on the way to take her to Children’s Mercy hospital.

Makenzie's journey though all this has by no means been an easy one and has been extremely rocky at times. Makenzie has now had four open heart surgeries. Her first surgery was at 7 days (Norwood), her second was at 4 months (Glenn), her 3rd was at 3 years old (Fontan), and her most recent in May of 2010 was to repair severe tricuspid valve regurgitation by placing an annuloplasty ring around her valve. On top of her heart surgeries she has also had surgeries to place a G-tube, a fundoplication, a duodenum repair where she was given a 50 percent chance to survive, tonsils and adenoids removed, a frenulectomy, 6 heart caths, and had to have chest tubes re-inserted twice. We have also had issues dealing with keeping her oxygen up, blood clots, dialysis, a leaky tricuspid valve, plastic bronchitis, several cases of pneumonia, arrhythmias, hypertension, paralyzed vocal cord, sepsis, pleural effusions, being fed through a G-tube until she was 2½, daily breathing treatments, several admissions to the hospital, and shortness of breath.

Makenzie will be 6 years old in July of 2010 and you would never know how much she has been though, and continues to go through by just looking at her that is unless you lift up her shirt. Six years ago I never imagined going through everything we have gone through; there have been several bumps along the road that the doctors never warned us about. There is no way we could have gotten where we are today without having such a great family and group of friends to support us. Having a child with a life threatening condition changes you. It brings out strength in you that you never knew you had, it makes you appreciate the little things in life, it makes you fear that every memory you make together may be your last, and it teaches you that miracles do happen. We do not know what the future holds for Makenzie, what we do know is Makenzie was sent to us for a reason and we feel very blessed to have her and her "special" heart.