Kenzie's Story

Images captured By Michelle Wells Photography

www.michellewellsphotography.ca

Tiny Light Kenzie is a fighter. She has endured more in the first nine months of her life than most people have in their lifetime. This sweet girl loves when her parents read and sing to her. She also enjoys splashing in the bathtub and listening to music. However, her absolute favourite thing to do is watch the fish swim at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.

In the same year they were planning to get married, Kenzie’s parents learned they had a baby on the way. After a high-risk screen, Kenzie’s mother underwent a CVS procedure which produced some troubling results. A genetic deletion was detected and further testing revealed that Kenzie had a complex case of Tetrology of Fallot. Her parents were told she would need a total repair at birth, as she would not survive the usual three to six months that most babies wait. However, after she was born, Kenzie required surgery to repair an umbilical hernia and an imperforated anus, which set her surgery back a few weeks. Her surgery was put off once again after testing revealed that her case was even more complex than doctors originally thought. Doctors tried to put in a BT shunt to help Kenzie temporarily until she was big enough to receive surgery; however, Kenzie kept clotting the shunts. Even after doctors found a type of shunt that worked for her, Kenzie had to receive surgery once again after developing sepsis and a massive infection in her sternum. After spending the first 94 days of her life in the hospital, Kenzie was finally allowed to go home.

In May of this year, Kenzie received a nine-hour total repair surgery in which doctors repaired the large VSD (hole) in her heart, widened part of her pulmonary artery, and had a conduit patched in to her heart to re-route blood flow to her lungs without disturbing her coronary artery. The surgery was a huge success. Kenzie is now interested in oral feeding, has a lot more energy, and no longer sweats and breathes at a fast rate. She no longer requires daily injections and will not require surgery for another five or six years.  In her mother’s words: “When my arms get tired from holding my sweet Kenzie, I remember the many hours we spent sitting at her bedside praying for the chance to have her in our arms for even just a minute. I feel that every second of pain we have endured has made us grateful parents.”

Story by Emily Harrison