Initial Diagnosis

From day 1, Emerson blessed our lives immensely as first time parents. The whole month of July mom and dad got to spend every day with her. Family came in and visited. She ate well. She slept well. We were really blessed. As the days turned into weeks, and weeks turned in a month, she was growing both in weight and height. Her pediatrician appointments were all good and they were happy with her development. By all accounts, our sweet, precious baby was doing exactly what she was suppose to do and there were no problems. We were loving the life that was ours. I remember telling my mom how perfect life was and how happy I was. I had everything I had ever wanted; a perfect wife, a good job, great house, awesome friends and now our little miss Emerson.

Due to the beginning of the school year, and working with 6th graders, the common cold came around. I had a head cold for about 2 weeks. Then I gave it to my wife for a few days. We were both constantly around Emerson, and babies get sick, so we knew she would probably feel the effects, and we just wanted to monitor that. The weekend approaching her 3rd month birthday, she started to not act like herself. She was more pale, clammy, not really eating, not really sleeping (being really fussy), and stopped with the wet diapers. We thought she was just dehydrated. 4:30 am on Monday (September 24th), we took her into Summerlin ER (this is where she was born). They ran tests, and I think for how he saw she was, took at look at her heart.

Dr. Fox came into the room after sometime and said, “We still have more questions, but she has congestive heart failure”.

I don’t know if your heart has every truly stopped for a beat, but this was one of those times. That one sentence rocked us to our core, and we knew our entire world was changed forever. My wife immediately falls into my arms and starts bawling. My tears roll onto her back. Immediate thoughts of how could this happen to our precious baby?

This starts the longest 24 hour period of our lives...that goes into a week....that continues now..