MURRIETA
The Heart of a Fighter BY THE TIME AVERY FAITH GONZALEZ WAS JUST 1 DAY OLD, she had already endured a heart surgery that was critical for her survival. “I had a normal pregnancy—I wasn’t high risk or anything— A mother’s voice. A daughter’s fight. A healthy outcome.
agreed to a game plan. She joined the Rady Children’s Family Advisory Council and served as the parent liaison on the Cardiac Advisory Council to provide feedback and to help guide staff to make improvements. “Avery was my first child, so I was really keeping close track of everything that happened, and I was speaking
but when I went into labor, the birth wasn’t progressing,” recalls Avery’s mother, Tiffany. “Every time they gave me Pitocin, my baby’s heart rate would drop, so I had to have an emergency C-section.” Right after she was born, Avery was immediately rushed to Rady Children’s, where she was diagnosed with DiGeorge Syndrome, a chromosomal disorder that can result in poor development of several body systems. The outlook was bleak. “Her doctor told me that she needed a stent in her pulmonary valve, and if that stent didn’t work, we would have to let her go,” Tiffany recalls. Avery pulled through, but her fight was far from over. The syndrome affected her heart and lungs, with conditions that included pulmonary stenosis (a heart valve disease), a hole in her heart known as VSD, and vascular ring, or abnormal formations of the aorta. To put it simply: Avery needed open heart surgery. She spent two weeks in the cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU) at Rady Children’s before going home. After 3 months, Avery was back in the hospital for her first open heart surgery. Unfortunately, things that could go wrong did, but Avery continued to fight battle after battle, including a temporarily paralyzed vocal cord, high fevers, narcotic withdrawal, a tracheotomy, gastrostomy tube, a fundoplication surgery to attach her upper stomach to her esophagus to help reduce acid reflux, and, finally, a second open heart surgery. All before she was 6 months old. While the Gonzalez family spent nearly five months at Rady Children’s, Tiffany became Avery’s voice. She called a family meeting with Avery’s team of doctors to make sure everyone
up about it,” she says. “I was able to take time off work and be there every minute. I know a lot of parents
AVERY FAITH GONZALEZ
don’t have that opportunity, so I wanted to join the advisory council to be that voice for families, especially miliary families like us who may not have the local support that we had.” On April 29 of this year, Avery turned 9. She’s now “a generally healthy kid,” says her mom. She takes a baby aspirin daily and has routine checkups with Brian Fagan, MD, a pediatric cardiologist at Rady Children’s and associate clinical professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine. The family, who now lives in Murrieta, often sees Dr. Fagan in the Hospital’s Murrieta location, and feels fortunate to be able to continue to see the doctor who has been by their side from the very start. “Dr. Fagan has been Avery’s doctor since the first 30 minutes of her life. He’s always been so receptive to all my questions and now to hers, since she’s 9 now and thinks she’s a little adult,” Tiffany laughs. “He says she really beat the odds—I was told that only 30 percent of babies with her condition survive. She’s been a fighter since day one and we never stopped advocating for her.”
SUMMER 2023 HEALTHY KIDS MAGAZINE 29
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