Caroline's Story

The following story was given to me by Katie Ard Puckett who lives here in the Jackson area. I actually met Katie's mother, Mrs. Ard, when I returned to work after my Avery was born and had heart surgery. She shared pictures of Caroline with me, and basically told me that through all the hardship, there is much joy and happiness. I appreciated that so much, and hope others can see that through this story as well. I was so glad Katie agreed to share their story with us, and pray that God will continue to bless and heal sweet little Caroline. Thanks Katie and Family!


Caroline, 5 Days Old, after her 1st Open Heart Surgery

Caroline, today


Emily Caroline Puckett was born on Thursday, July 10, 2008. She was born with a serious heart defect called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). This basically means that the left side of her heart is severely underdeveloped or nonexistent. To correct this, she must undergo a 3-stage surgical process. She had her first surgery (Norwood) on July 15, 2008, at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). After being in Philadelphia for a month, they let us come home. Caroline had many obstacles in those few months at home. After Caroline’s first round of immunizations she had seizures and had to be hospitalized at Blair E. Batson Children’s Hospital in Jackson for one week. In October 2008, Caroline went for a routine cardiology appointment and her oxygen readings were very low. Her cardiologist, Dr. Jennifer Shores, decided to keep Caroline overnight and schedule a heart catherization for the next day. The next morning, Caroline went in for a heart cath and they found that the shunt in her heart was clotted almost completely. The Dr. did not feel comfortable fixing the problem here, and therefore wanted us to go back to CHOP for the procedure.

When Caroline came back from her heart cath they brought her to me and put her in my arms while telling me that we were going to have to go immediately back to CHOP to have this fixed. Everything after that moment was a blur for me, but the nurses came in and took her from me to put her in the ICU setting to keep a better watch on her while we were going home and gathering our things. Within minutes of them taking Caroline from my arms she crashed and they told me to kiss her and tell her I loved her and walk away so that they could do all they could to help my baby. I can’t begin to tell you what that felt like. I was so powerless and my baby was slipping away from me as I watched. Caroline was emergently intubated and kept comfortable until they could arrange for an air jet to come pick us up. We arrived in Philadelphia in the middle of the night and they worked on her for hours to stabilize her for another cath the next morning. She was able to have the catherization and her shunt was stinted so that blood could move freely. The surgeon came to me that day and told me that 10% of these babies die suddenly at home between the first and second stage surgeries because of this very reason. If we had not had a Dr. appointment and been in the hospital when this happened, we would not have our little girl today. Caroline’s vocal cords were damaged during the emergency intubation and because of this, we had to thicken her formula to a nectar consistency to prevent aspiration. Shortly after we returned home from Philadelphia Caroline stopped eating by mouth because of the strain it was putting on her heart. We spent another 10 days at Blair Batson trying to work out feeding issues and learning how to deal with an NG tube for feeding that ran up her nose and down her throat. Caroline’s 2nd stage surgery was scheduled for December 5, 2008 and she had a scheduled pre-surgery heart cath planned for December 1st. We were very fortunate to have Sanderson Farms provide us with a flight to PA for our 2nd surgery. They told us that they would arrange for us to be taken if we could leave Nov. 25th. We spent Thanksgiving holidays at the Ronald McDonald House in Philadelphia and took Caroline to the hospital that Friday to be weened off of blood thinners. The heart cath that Caroline had on Dec. 1st showed that her aorta had narrowed and needed to be ballooned and reopened for optimal blood flow. Because of the procedure done during the heart cath, Caroline’s surgery would have to be postponed at least 4 weeks. The doctors did not want us flying back and forth between Philadelphia and Mississippi and decided that it would be best to keep Caroline in the hospital until surgery. Caroline had her 2nd stage (Glenn) surgery on December 22, 2008. After surgery Caroline did really well and was extubated very quickly and taken off a lot of the post-surgery meds. On December 23rd, in the middle of the night, I received a phone call saying that she coded and had to be re-intubated. That day was a very hard day for us because they kept her almost in a paralytic state the entire day and night. Christmas eve was a much better day and she started to slowly come around. By Christmas morning, they extubated Caroline and she was awake and aware enough to “open” her presents that had been provided by the hospital and to take a picture with Santa Claus. The next 2 weeks were spent being taken off medicines and working with physical and occupational therapy to start getting geared towards going home. Caroline never picked back up eating and the doctors at CHOP thought that it would be in her best interest to have a surgical procedure to insert a G-tube into her stomach for feeding. Finally, on January 22, 2009 they let us go home. After spending Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years in Philadelphia, news of going home was music to our ears.
Caroline has been doing very good since January and has been living a VERY happy life. She goes to the cardiologist , now, only once every 3 months. She had to have a heart cath in May 2009 to balloon her aorta again and everything went really well. Caroline has one planned surgery left to go, and will be traveling back to Philadelphia in the spring. We could not have made it this far without the outpouring of love and support that we have received along the way. It has been a very long and hard journey that is not anywhere close to being over, but we are so very fortunate to have her. We hope to bring more awareness to the growing number of children born with congenital heart defects.
Sincerely,

Adam, Katie and Caroline Puckett

“1 in 100 babies is born with a congenital heart defect. WHAT IF THAT ONE WAS YOURS?”