This is the second holiday season Seattle Children’s Building Maintenance Technician Jerome Ramos will spend with his family in the hospital. His daughter has been in the hospital waiting for a heart transplant since July 2021. Before coming to Seattle Children’s, 10-month-old Kaelyn, of Honolulu, Hawaii, was experiencing shortness of breath. When her face puffed […]
On December 30, 2021, Kelsey Schleppy gave birth to her baby girl, Maleila. Within days of taking her home, Kelsey’s intuition told her something wasn’t right. Her family practice doctor assured her Maleila’s shallow breathing and lack of appetite wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but Kelsey kept a watchful eye, nevertheless. Within a few […]
“Helping other people is a really important part of my life.” When Jenna Engelsvold first arrived at Seattle Children’s as a nursing student more than a decade ago, she knew this is where she wanted to be. “I was walking down the hall and looking around and just felt this gut feeling that this was […]
In 2016, Seattle Children’s extended their mobile extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) capabilities to provide the service to critically ill children during transport to the hospital from anywhere in a five-state region. ECMO is an advanced life-support therapy that functions for the heart and lungs when the organs fail or need to rest. Seattle Children’s became […]
A picture is worth a thousand words, or so the old saying goes. But how much is a 3D-printed model of what’s in that picture worth? For pediatric surgeons who use 3D-printed hearts of the children they operate on, their impact can be huge. And for surgeons-in-training, this technology can allow them to learn new […]
As Director of Cardiac Catherization Labs at Seattle Children’s, Dr. Brian Morray routinely performs diagnostic as well as complex heart procedures on patients as young as a few days old all the way up to adults. Part of his job is to provide minimally invasive services for children with congenital heart disease (CHD). “Congenital heart […]
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 […]
It was during a 20-week ultrasound that Sarah Ouellette got life-changing news: Her baby would be born with a serious heart defect. “They didn’t know if my baby would survive,” Ouellette said. “But I knew deep down that I wanted to fight for my child’s life.” Feeling lost, Ouellette sought out a second opinion. “I […]
On New Year’s Eve of 2019, Sierra Landman learned she was pregnant with her first child. “We were so excited,” Landman said. “Then we learned that something wasn’t right with our baby’s heart.” Nevaeh Landman was born on September 10, 2020 at Madigan Army Medical Center with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and immediately rushed to […]
