Two years ago, Meagan stood in a hospital room at Seattle Children’s cradling her 1-year-old daughter, Harper, against her chest. Her fiancé, Josh, huddled close to them and kissed the thinning hair on top of their baby’s head. A feeding tube was routed through Harper’s nose and her eyes were brimming with tears. Exhausted, she […]
Having one child in need of a liver transplant can be tremendously challenging for a parent. Eugenia and Justino Hurtado have four. All four of the Hurtado children were born with Maple Syrup Urine Disease (MSUD) — a rare genetic metabolic disorder in which the body is unable to break down certain parts of proteins […]
Colleen and Derek spent the first half of Colleen’s pregnancy like many first-time parents, imagining what their child would be like, musing about things they would do as a family and celebrating a joyful new chapter in their lives. They never imagined they would have a child with special needs or that doctors would predict […]
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been asking ethical questions about vaccinating children against the disease: Is it necessary to vaccinate children, who seem to experience the disease differently than adults? Should children in school be required to get the vaccine? We spoke to Dr. Doug Diekema, an emergency medicine physician at […]
The lifetime goal of Dr. Sihoun Hahn, director of the Wilson Disease Center of Excellence and investigator in Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s Center for Integrative Brain Research, is one step closer to being achieved. After more than 30 years studying Wilson disease, Hahn’s newborn screening test for this rare genetic condition will be trialed […]
When a pregnant Heather Henson learned her baby, Dawson, had hypoplastic left heart syndrome — a rare and serious condition where the left side of the heart is not fully developed — she immediately began researching the disease and the hospitals that treat it. Heather and her family live in Anchorage, Alaska. The state doesn’t […]
Penny was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a solid-tumor cancer with a survival rate of about 50%, three months after her baby brother, William, was born with a life-threatening heart condition. Today, William is thriving at home and Penny is in remission. Penny’s final immunotherapy treatment was on Sept. 2 after a year of treatments that included […]
The phone call came at 2 a.m. It was a neonatologist calling about Kimberly Aldinger and Scott Houghtaling’s son, Grayson. Kimberly had given birth to premature twins a month earlier and both babies were in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Swedish Hospital. The new parents had returned home to get a much-needed night […]
Two weeks before their 3-month-old son was scheduled for his second open-heart surgery, Kyle and Samantha Hatch were told their daughter likely had neuroblastoma. “We were utterly broken,” Samantha said. “But we had to pull it together for our children.” After Penny’s tumor was discovered on her MRI, she needed a biopsy to definitively diagnose […]
Who are your heroes? Are they exceptionally talented? Do they have superhuman abilities? Are they destined for greatness? Or, are they ordinary people who face tremendous challenges and persevere out of love? Kyle and Samantha Hatch undoubtedly fall in the latter category. In the past year, one of their twin sons was born with a […]
