Meet Hayden, your 2016 Summer Scamper Patient Hero

“Seeing our baby hooked up to so many machines and monitors was devastating—and awe-inspiring,” mom Kira recalls of Hayden’s first open-heart surgery at just 9 months old. Hayden was born with heart defects that threatened his life.

Luckily, our Children’s Heart Center, supported by generous donors like you, is home to world-renown cardiothoracic surgeons, including Frank Hanley, MD, who perform 600 lifesaving surgeries each year. Hayden recovered in our cardiovascular intensive care unit, and Kira says, “The nurses he had while in that single room, monitoring his every heartbeat for those first hours post-surgery, were amazing. We are so grateful for their attention and the guidance they provided as they showed us how we could just do the simple things like feeding him a bottle of breastmilk.”