Open Heart Surgery for Baby Cecilia

Hi everyone. My name is Sara Cisneros. I'm the mother of the beautiful baby girl in the picture, Cecilia. She's 16 months old and absolutely full of life!

Cecilia was born with 2 holes in her heart. She was able to get one of those holes closed by herself. However, the 2nd hole in her Septum is still there and is beginning to cause problems. While she was able to build up tissue within the hole, there is still too much blood pouring through it. All of the extra blood has caused the left side of her heart to grow 30% since March 31st.

At our last appointment on 11/17/2021, Dr. Muyskens (her cardiologist) told Jason (her dad) and I, that he was no longer comfortable waiting to see if the hole would close on it's own. He then told us what we had been dreading for months, that our sassy baby girl was going to need open heart surgery to close the hole. 

He then referred us over to a cardiac surgeon, Dr. Tam. Our next appointment, is January 5th where we will consult with the surgeon and set a surgery date.

Cecilia is going to be in the hospital for 5-8 days. We also have to quarantine a few weeks before and after surgery to make sure she doesn't get sick. As you can imagine, any type of sickness that involves the respiratory system would be detrimental to her health.

Jason and I have come to the extremely difficult realization that we will not be able to come up with all the money for Cecilia's surgery and all the other expenses that go with it. Being that the surgery will be at the beginning of a new year, we will have to meet our plan deductible before our co-insurance kicks in. After looking at that cost and the cost of us potentially being out of work for 4+ weeks, we realized that the numbers just weren't in our favor.

On top of all of this, on 12/7 someone broke into our home and stole all of our electronics including the laptop and Ipad I use to run my business. So we now have to rebuy the necessities that were stolen.

So, we come to you as parents who don't know where else to turn, and ask if you could find it in your heart to help us insure that Cecilia will grow up healthy with a strong heart.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts,

Sara, Jason Sr, Jason Jr and Cecilia