Hearts for Khloe

11/27/2025

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!!! 🦃🍽🤎🧡

11/25/2025

I absolutely LOVE Khloe's team!!!!! ❤️‍🩹💙

Arkansas Children’s Heart Institute is celebrating 35 years of heart transplants! ❤️

This milestone reflects decades of innovation, compassion and lifesaving pediatric cardiac care. Since launching our heart transplant program in 1990, our team has performed 393 heart transplants, offering renewed hope and healthier futures to children from across the region and beyond. In that time, we’ve also evaluated more than 600 patients, ensuring each child receives a thorough, compassionate assessment and a plan tailored to their unique needs.

This legacy reflects the strength of our multidisciplinary team, the trust of the families we serve and our ongoing commitment to advancing lifesaving pediatric heart care.

Congratulations team!

11/24/2025

I’ll never forget the things I saw in the hallways of the Pediatric Cardiac ICU.

The quiet bravery.
The tired eyes.
The parents pacing with coffee in one hand and hope in the other.
The way the air feels heavy, like everyone here is holding their breath for the same reason.

You walk past room after room knowing there’s a child fighting a battle they never asked for… a family praying for a miracle… alarms beeping, nurses rushing, machines doing the work tiny bodies can’t do on their own.

And theb you realize how fragile, precious, and out-of-our-hands this life really is.

There’s something about watching a dad hold his baby in a place like this… with all the strength in his arms, all the love on his face, and still the fear tucked quietly behind it.

You don’t forget that.
You don’t forget any of it.

These hallways change you.
They soften you.
They shake you.
They remind you that every moment outside of here, every ordinary day, is a gift.

And that the smallest victories… a stable night, a better number, one less alarm… feel like mountains moving.

It makes you look at the world differently.
It makes you look at other moms differently.

We’re grateful.
We’re humbled.
And we’re never, ever the same after this.

11/24/2025

November 24: Khloe is 4 months....120 days....post op from her new mitral valve! She's doing unbelievable well!! ❤️‍🩹 This is a 360° from her last replacement!! I'm very impressed with her surgical team!! She did let me know this morning that her heart is "cute". 😂 I told her it is in a very....mechanical way! 😅

Anyways her INR is a beautiful 2.7!!

Big sister is home for the week! 🤎

Dad is still hacking up a lung, but isn't "sickly". If that makes sense lol

I'm now pain free! Today is my last day on Flagyl and Thursday is my last day on Cipro, and then we hope my flare up is gone and never comes back!

We hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving and try to stay dry!!!! 🦃☔️⛈️

11/22/2025

Ohhhhhh where does the time go? 🥺❤️‍🩹

Khloe has come such a loooooong ways in such a short time!! I'm simply amazed.

11/21/2025

November 21: Khloe's INR has stayed relatively stable! She sank to a 2.2 despite being on her old regular dose so that is weird. She was a 2.3 Monday and last Thursday she was a 2.5, so staying on the threshold.

Mama is feeling better pain wise, but these antibiotics have my belly soooo messed up. 😞 On top of being nauseous 50% of the time.

Dad has come down with some kind of plague.

Big sister is home alllll next week for Thanksgiving break and I am ready!!!!!

11/21/2025

Being a heart parent means learning to carry storms no one else can see. There are countless moments when you’re battling your own fear, grief, and worry, all while doing everything possible to keep your child feeling nothing but warmth and light.

Heart parents know this struggle all too well. The weight of what-ifs, the uncertainty of the future, the anxiety before appointments or surgeries, and the surge of emotions that rises the moment you walk into a hospital. The desire to give your warrior the whole world while simultaneously wanting to protect them inside the safest bubble imaginable… it’s a constant push and pull that never truly fades.

Yet our heart warriors rarely see these storms. They don’t feel the winds or the rain because we stand between them and the weather. We shelter them with everything we have, our strength, our love, our hope. We work tirelessly to make sure their days are filled with sunshine, even when clouds hover over our own.

And even on the days when our hearts feel heavy, when the grief or fear feels overwhelming, when simply getting up takes courage, we still rise. We still choose to be their umbrella, their protector, their source of light.

To every heart parent facing storms that most will never understand: I see you. I see how hard you fight to make sure your child never feels a drop of the rain you’re standing in. I see your bravery as you walk through uncertainty, advocate through fear, and hold onto hope even when the skies darken.

It is exhausting to weather your own storm while being the shelter for someone you love more than anything. Yet you show up, day after day.

And on the hardest days, please remember:
You don’t have to hold the umbrella alone.
There is a community of heart parents ready to stand behind you, beside you, and over you offering shelter when you need a break from the storm.

11/20/2025

❤️

Our hearts go out to the medical families who've faced unimaginable challenges. We're driven by hope for the bravest hearts ❤️

11/19/2025

When you have a child with a heart defect, the world you imagined shifts overnight. You picture teaching them about life. About kindness, about courage, about how to navigate a world that can be overwhelming and beautiful at the same time.

But suddenly you realize your role looks different.

You become their voice. Their advocate. Their protector.
You become the one who has to teach others how to see your child clearly. Not as a diagnosis, not as a prognosis, not as a chart full of numbers but as a whole, extraordinary human being.

You teach nurses how your child likes to be comforted.
You teach doctors that your child isn’t just a case, but a story.
You teach friends and family that strength doesn’t always look loud.
You teach strangers that bravery can exist in the size of a chest scar or the beat of a fragile heart.
You teach the world how to love your child the way you do: gently, respectfully, without fear.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, your child teaches you too.
They teach you resilience without words.
They teach you the sacredness of every quiet moment.
They teach you that a small heart can hold immeasurable courage.
They teach you that even on the hardest days, there is still joy, still hope, still something worth fighting for.

Having a medically complex child means rewriting the script of parenthood, not because you wanted to, but because you had to. And yet, in ways you never expected, it makes you fiercer, softer, and stronger than you ever imagined.

You are not just raising a child with a heart defect.
You’re raising a warrior.
And you are their world’s greatest teacher.

11/18/2025

Update on mama: I'm glad I went to the ER. CT revealed acute diverticulitis....AGAIN. 😭😭 Got a dose of meds in my system and hopefully Walmart can get it together tomorrow and fill all these meds they have me on for the next week! Prayers would be greatly appreciated. This HURTS and has put me on my b***y!