Zyler's Story
Written by Krissie Martinez
We found out about Zyler's CHD when I was 4 months pregnant. It was supposed to be a great day finding out the gender, but it all came crashing down. They said it's a boy, but there is something wrong. Then all the joy was gone. We got sent to a pediatric cardiologist by the name of Dr. Laird in Dallas. All the Appointments were depressing. As we went to more visits we found out he had Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, a single ventricle, no speen and Heterotaxy.
Our world turned upside down as well as our other children's. Visits and doctor appointments just kept on coming. 5-6 a day. All our sleepless nights just got worse. We kept getting asked if we wanted to keep the pregnancy going and as a family we all said yes.
Once the 40 weeks was here, we were nervous but excited. We all went back to Dallas to finally have our baby boy. I had a C section and boy he came out screaming. Of course he was blue but he was crying.
The hardest part was not being able to hold or touch him. Later that day I found out he had flat lined 4 times but he fought and so did the staff.
photo courtesy of Our Warrior Zyler
photo courtesy of Our Warrior Zyler
July 8th I finally got to see him. 8 days later we held him right before he went in for his 1st open heart surgery.
At 15 days he had his stomach surgery to untwist his stomach and to put his feeding tube in. He fought so hard and to this day still fights. He has had 3 heart caths in between all of this.
At 11 months old he went back for another cath and his Glenn procedure for his open heart. Zyler is a fighter. He finally came home August 10th, 2015.
He has done amazing so far. Since late March he began getting tired easily and his numbers have began to drop. He will be having his next Heart cath July 2, 2019.