BREATHE A PLACE TO
By Maria Tsikalas Open Arms Guest
heaviness of hospital life. The apartment gave my husband the stability to continue working remotely and gave us a space to rest, laugh, and gather strength for each new day. When Cora finally had her longest stretch outside the hospital in April, we took her on stroller walks around the grounds. The bright spring colors and blooming trees at Duke Forest were among the first things she ever saw outside the fluorescent lights of her hospital room. For our older daughter, five- year-old Lucia, the pool became a place of joy. It was a space where she could make friends, learn to swim, and simply be a kid again after months of isolation.
“We think we’re seeing a heart defect.” Those words, spoken last August during my routine 20- week anatomy scan, changed our lives in an instant. My husband and I were expecting our second child, and until that moment, everything had seemed normal. But that day, we entered a world we’d never imagined. Our daughter was diagnosed in utero with a rare and critical heart defect called truncus arteriosus. As I began researching, I discovered that Duke University Hospital had recently pioneered a new surgical approach, a partial heart transplant, that could significantly improve outcomes and quality of life for children like ours. Within weeks, we had consulted with the surgeon at Duke, flown from St. Louis to North Carolina, and learned that our baby also had two additional heart defects. After that appointment, our decision was clear: we would travel to Durham for this innovative treatment, giving our daughter the best possible chance at a long, healthy life. 5
By sheer luck, or perhaps divine intervention, an old friend from high school whom I hadn’t spoken to in 15 years saw a post in a North Carolina Facebook group about the Open Arms Foundation. She sent it to me, and we applied right away. When the property manager called to say we had been approved for an apartment, we were stunned. It seemed too good to be true. We held our breath until we pulled into MAA Duke Forest and saw the beautiful apartment waiting for us. We couldn’t believe it existed or that we were fortunate enough to stay there, free from the financial burden of rent and utilities, able to focus entirely on the medical journey ahead. Our daughter Cora was born on December 17 and immediately intubated. Several procedures and more than 200 days in the hospital followed. Through it all, our Open Arms apartment became the greatest blessing. Set along the edge of Duke Forest, it offered grounding trail walks and hammock breaks that gave us moments of peace amid the
Tsikalas Family
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