Help Zemileene Heal: Lifelong Care Needed

First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time to read and understand what our family is going through.

On September 26th, my 5-week-old daughter, Zemileene, had open-heart surgery. Her condition is called Total Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Return (TAPVR), a rare congenital heart defect that occurs when the pulmonary veins connect to the heart in an abnormal way. In babies with TAPVR, oxygen-rich blood from the lungs mixes with oxygen-poor blood in the right side of the heart, resulting in the body not getting enough oxygen.

As you can imagine, the visual of the surgery alone has been mentally hard to process, and unfortunately, even after surgery, she is requiring lifelong care under cardiology as well as pulmonary doctors.

On 10/01, the doctors and nurses informed us that her right lung collapsed. During her surgery, they believe they hit the nerve that affects her right diaphragm, causing her diaphragm to be elevated and not functioning. Due to this positioning, it’s causing the right lung added stressors. They’ve started additional respiratory therapy for my baby while we’re here in the hospital and are watching the diaphragm closely to assess if it will require an additional surgery or if it’s permanently paralyzed. They’re also treating her with blood thinners for a blood clot found in her scans. Not only that, but the amount of medications they’ve had her on and are beginning to wean her off of is causing our poor baby to go through withdrawals.

I have been at the hospital for going on two weeks and could be here for an extended period of time if they decide to do this diaphragm surgery.

We have been blessed to be able to have lodging through the hospital, and we take full advantage of the free meals (lunch and dinner on weekdays) from the Ronald McDonald charity donations. Even so, we’ve tapped out our resources, and we know that we have a financial responsibility towards her bills as we signed the documents stating we understood the estimated cost (with no complications). We are asking for any help from outside sources.

On 10/2, my daughter turned 6 weeks, and they stated her insurance wasn’t added to my case through state assistance. While I know they’ll go back 3 months once they are able to get her added back into my insurance, the financial department has explained we need to pay for the medications and can send by mail once insurance is back to be paid back. However, with funds exhausted, dad not being at work for almost three weeks, and me being out of work since I hit 36 weeks, I have to swallow my pride and ask for help. Those who know me know this is absolutely not the way I operate. I hate asking for help, but I know my family needs it at this time.

Any help is greatly appreciated by my entire family, but most especially by my little precious girl.

Thank you in advance.

Please, if you can’t donate, SHARE your heart out to any and everyone you can ❤️‍

If you’d rather directly send funds outside of this link my Cashapp info is: $JessicaMontanio1988

10/8 update:

Zemileene will be in OT for help on feeds my little girl can’t latch like she was before she is having to learn the stuff she just got down before surgery all over again

On the bright side we’ve weaned most of her medications that she won’t be required to be taking on a regular basis Her lung and diaphragm are still unchanged which isn’t a “good thing” but it means they aren’t going to do surgeries for now unless they show signs of infection or complication- more than likely than not her diaphragm is permanently paralyzed

We are still going to need help her care is not ending even after we get the clear to go home (fingers crossed it’s this week or next) ❤️‍ We have reached $920 in donations in two days and that’s crazy

Thank you to everyone donating and those sharing y’all are amazing !

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