Help Kelsey and Maxley

UPDATE: After several weeks of slowly getting better, the last few days Maxley has started to take steps backwards. He went into renal failure, so they adjusted a few things to help to get his kidneys working again, however in doing that has caused some extra fluid and breathing issues. Unfortunately, today (Thursday 10/12/2023) Maxley has been reintubated. The road has gotten longer and Kelsey could use more support for meals, to pay Ashley (the nanny who has come every day to still be there for Maxley), to pay someone to watch her dog and housesit, and everything else that comes with extended hospital stays and not being able to work. Please help if you are able. If anything PRAY! Pray for Maxley and pray for Kelsey and Grandma Terri who need strength to be there day in and day out at the hospital.

My name is Codi and my nephew, Maxley, had his third open heart surgery on Wednesday, August 23, 2023. The surgery went well, and he was recovering well.

Unfortunately, yesterday, 2 days after surgery his hemoglobin dropped so they took him back to surgery and opened him up to clean up the bleeding. That also went well, however when they closed him and added another chest tube, that tube hit and punctured his lung causing his blood pressure to plummet and sent him into cardiac arrest. They reopened him and had to perform CPR on him before getting him on bypass again. They were able to repair the lung, but the amount of trauma his heart and lungs went through, doctors brought him out of surgery on life support (ECMO) to let things rest and heal. After surgery, he was losing a lot of blood from the new chest tube. They were able to give him blood to supplement what he was losing, but after 2 hours the doctors realized they needed to figure out the new source of this blood loss, so they brought him back to the OR to open him up yet again. The chest tube had hit an Intercostal artery and that was leaking and causing the blood loss. Luckily, the doctors were able to repair things, and as of today (Saturday) things are looking a little better.

Maxley will stay on ECMO for the next week or so. There are several risks with ECMO so the sooner he can get off the better. Once he is off, there will be several weeks in the hospital for recovery and weaning off all the narcotics.

Given that Maxley had to undergo CPR, the risk is that there is brain damage. We are all just praying the doctors acted quick enough and he got quality CPR and he will suffer minimal to no brain damage.

I started this go fund me for my sister, Kelsey, and nephew because what was supposed to be a week/week and a half hospital stay, has turned into much longer. My sister is living in the hospital full time as to not leave Maxley’s side, so she can’t work during this time and doesn’t have enough PTO time coming. As most of you know, his nanny Ashley has become part of our family and loves Maxley as much as we all do. She will be there with her every day and is unable to be paid since they are in the hospital (rules from the county) so some of the funds will go toward Ashley’s bills and gas driving back and forth.

As many of you know my sister lost her husband unexpectedly, 4 days before Maxley was born. This is truly an unfair set of circumstances my sister has had to go through, and if we can help take away some of her financial burden, it’s just one less thing she has to deal with.

Even if you are unable to donate financially, I ask that you please pray for Maxley, Kelsey, my mom, his medical team, and everyone who knows and loves Maxley, that he can make it through this without any lasting affects.