The Riddell Family

Hi, my name is Lexie Trosclair. I am Courtney Riddell’s sister. Courtney married Austin in 2017, they had their son, Oakes, in 2019, and they brought their baby girl, Kollins, into the world on July 19th of this year. I am starting this fundraiser for their sweet family.

Courtney had a normal pregnancy with no reason to ever think anything was wrong with Kollins. All growth scans showed a healthy baby. When Kollins was delivered, she was rushed to the NICU due to swallowing some fluid. They later heard a heart murmur and decided she needed to be life flighted to Childrens Memorial downtown. You can imagine what a shock this was for Courtney and Austin. They rushed downtown to meet Kollins there. The doctors diagnosed Kollins with severe hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and Noonans syndrome. She was in the NICU for 19 days before finally getting to go “home”. I say home with quotation marks because since her NICU stay, Kollins had a 13 day stay in the IMU then was admitted again to the IMU 22 days ago. The doctors ultimately decided that Kollins’ heart muscle was too thick and she needed open heart surgery to remove a lot of the muscle.

The surgery was done on November 11th and lasted 7+ hours long. Her chest has been closed twice now and they have had to reopen it both times because her blood pressure dropped and heart rate spiked. She has been in the ICU for 5 days and has been fully sedated and on a paralytic and is very swollen.

Through all of this, Courtney and Austin have been incredibly strong even though they are hanging by a thread. They have split time between one of them being at the hospital at all times and one of them spending a day with their 3 year old. They’ve been at the hospital full time since her surgery. Oakes is struggling to understand why his mommy and daddy aren’t with him, constantly saying he needs his mommy. Hearing it could break your heart.

Courtney’s 12 weeks of maternity leave pretty much came and went. Even when it was time to go back to work, Kollins had to be readmitted to the hospital. She has no more sick days and isn’t getting paid. They’re living at a hospital, sometimes a hotel across the street from the hospital, and having to eat out for every meal. Not to mention the ginormous $ amount in medical bills just from these 4 months, one income is making things that much more stressful, if that’s even possible.

Courtney and Austin are both high school coaches and unbelievable mentors to so many teenagers. They give everything they have to other peoples children, day in and day out. They are parents that have gotten their world turned upside down, like many of you have felt before, I’m sure. They don’t know what the next 30 minutes will look like with their little girl and they have to constantly worry about surviving off of just Austin’s income at the moment.

If you are able to give anything, please consider. You’d be making the load they are carrying just a little lighter. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts ❤️ Please also lift Kollins up in your prayers, it means so much.