Little Esme Joy’s Story❤️

Esme Joy is 10 weeks old & has spent 8 weeks of her life in hospital due to a Congenital heart defect. She is the 2nd child & first daughter of David & Shanka. She was born with an Absent right pulmonary artery, which means that the heart isn’t able to pump blood to the right lung only to the left lung. She also has a mild-moderate ASD (hole in her heart). She was postnatally diagnosed at 2 weeks of age.

She underwent her first open-heart surgery to place a shunt to allow blood flow to her right lung at just 4 weeks old. She seemed as if she was recovering quite well up until 1-2 weeks ago where she deteriorated greatly and was not managing without breathing support and the doctors saw no change in terms of her getting any better.

She has been also diagnosed Pulmonary hypertension, which is high blood pressure in her left lung due to her CHD and is quite unstable at the moment.

Mum and Dad have been told that Esme will need a second open-heart surgery to save her life as her condition has now become life threatening. This is because the pressure causes her to have episodes that don’t allow any blood into her left lung as it stiffens up and causes low oxygen & her to stop breathing quite suddenly- over time pulmonary hypertension can also cause right sided heart failure.

This is set to happen in the next 2-3 weeks depending on her condition as if she continues to deteriorate they will need to operate sooner.

She is currently in starship PICU & will be their until her surgery & afterwards. She is still her happy self and loves attention, her parents adore her and are staying as strong as they can for her & her older brother Corinthian who is 2. They travel to and from the hospital to also try and juggle some time to spend with their Son.

As you may know this is quite a stressful time for Esme’s parents and anyone who may be in a similar situation & they had unfortunately not had the time to prepare mentally, physically and financially for what they are going through & this page is to share Esme’s story and also to hopefully raise money to help her parents get through this hard time without having to worry about David returning to work while his daughter is in ICU & to help ease the load with their bills, transport costs and just anything worrying them at this point as the road ahead looks like a long journey and recovery for Esme.