Marley Brooklynn Fortner is a miracle baby. A complication called a placental abruption during her mother's pregnancy required an emergency C-section that made Marley's birthday June 20, 2009—a month earlier than planned—at St. John Medical Center in Tulsa. Marley had to be resuscitated, and the doctor told her family the next day that he had thought he would lose Marley and her 23-year-old mother, Kendyl.
Marley's first two hours were rough. A ventilator had to breathe for her, and doctors and nurses injected her with dopamine to stabilize her blood pressure, fentanyl (an opiate more potent than morphine) for pain and nitric oxide to lower her pulmonary hypertension. Within two days, doctors told Kendyl and Brian, her father, that their baby's pulmonary veins had formed incorrectly; they are connected to the wrong side of her heart. The condition is called Total Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Return (TAPVR). Open-heart surgery would be necessary because TAPVR causes a lack of oxygen, evidenced by the blue color surrounding Marley's mouth and eyes.
After learning that St. John could do nothing more for Marley, her parents opted for her emergency transfer to Saint Francis Hospital's Eastern Oklahoma Perinatal Center (EOPC)—the region's best newborn intensive care unit. Kendyl could not be discharged from St. John so soon after her own trauma, so Brian left his wife and followed Marley's ambulance to Saint Francis. Neonatologists performed several echocardiograms and other tests during the next few days. They discovered two holes in Marley's heart, and she would need surgery for those, too. Kendyl and Brian learned about oxygen, pulse oximeters to measure oxygen saturation in Marley's blood, CPR and what to do in an emergency. At 17 days old, Marley went home in "stable" condition.
Six days later, her blood oxygen levels got too low. This time, she was admitted to the Children's Hospital at Saint Francis. An electroencephalogram (EEG) that measured Marley's electrical activity in her brain came back negative for seizures; so did a pH probe for reflux, which sent a tube down her nose and into her esophagus. The next option was Marley's first surgery: a heart catheterization. It detected a heart defect no one had suspected: an extreme coarctation of the aorta, and the doctors did not know how Marley was alive.
Forty-eight hours later, Marley underwent a second heart surgery. A nurse came into the waiting room to say the procedure was almost complete. And then he came back. The surgery didn't go well, he said, and Marley didn't have much time. The surgeon's attempt to widen her aorta artery by cutting out the narrow part and stretching the wider parts together for reconnection failed. But the surgeon would do something that was common in the 1980s: He would remove the brachial artery from her left arm to patch her aorta. It was successful, but it leaves Marley with a weaker, possibly shorter left arm. In addition, the heart cath had damaged an artery in her right leg, and it leaves Marley with a shorter, weaker right leg, too. Despite it all, again Marley went home in "stable" condition.
She was home for about a month when she became unresponsive in her grandmother's arms. An ambulance took her to Saint Francis again, where she is currently in the pediatric intensive care unit. Her cardiologists suspect a virus has pushed her into heart failure, and now she is too sick to undergo heart surgery to correct her TAPVR.
Please keep 4-month old Marley and her family in your prayers
Marley's first two hours were rough. A ventilator had to breathe for her, and doctors and nurses injected her with dopamine to stabilize her blood pressure, fentanyl (an opiate more potent than morphine) for pain and nitric oxide to lower her pulmonary hypertension. Within two days, doctors told Kendyl and Brian, her father, that their baby's pulmonary veins had formed incorrectly; they are connected to the wrong side of her heart. The condition is called Total Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Return (TAPVR). Open-heart surgery would be necessary because TAPVR causes a lack of oxygen, evidenced by the blue color surrounding Marley's mouth and eyes.
After learning that St. John could do nothing more for Marley, her parents opted for her emergency transfer to Saint Francis Hospital's Eastern Oklahoma Perinatal Center (EOPC)—the region's best newborn intensive care unit. Kendyl could not be discharged from St. John so soon after her own trauma, so Brian left his wife and followed Marley's ambulance to Saint Francis. Neonatologists performed several echocardiograms and other tests during the next few days. They discovered two holes in Marley's heart, and she would need surgery for those, too. Kendyl and Brian learned about oxygen, pulse oximeters to measure oxygen saturation in Marley's blood, CPR and what to do in an emergency. At 17 days old, Marley went home in "stable" condition.
Six days later, her blood oxygen levels got too low. This time, she was admitted to the Children's Hospital at Saint Francis. An electroencephalogram (EEG) that measured Marley's electrical activity in her brain came back negative for seizures; so did a pH probe for reflux, which sent a tube down her nose and into her esophagus. The next option was Marley's first surgery: a heart catheterization. It detected a heart defect no one had suspected: an extreme coarctation of the aorta, and the doctors did not know how Marley was alive.
Forty-eight hours later, Marley underwent a second heart surgery. A nurse came into the waiting room to say the procedure was almost complete. And then he came back. The surgery didn't go well, he said, and Marley didn't have much time. The surgeon's attempt to widen her aorta artery by cutting out the narrow part and stretching the wider parts together for reconnection failed. But the surgeon would do something that was common in the 1980s: He would remove the brachial artery from her left arm to patch her aorta. It was successful, but it leaves Marley with a weaker, possibly shorter left arm. In addition, the heart cath had damaged an artery in her right leg, and it leaves Marley with a shorter, weaker right leg, too. Despite it all, again Marley went home in "stable" condition.
She was home for about a month when she became unresponsive in her grandmother's arms. An ambulance took her to Saint Francis again, where she is currently in the pediatric intensive care unit. Her cardiologists suspect a virus has pushed her into heart failure, and now she is too sick to undergo heart surgery to correct her TAPVR.
Please keep 4-month old Marley and her family in your prayers
We are praying! love, Sarah and Katie Gilleland
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