Andrew’s Story

Site created on December 11, 2009

Dave and I welcomed our 2nd child on 3/22/10. Our son, Andrew was born with 3 congenital heart defects - Truncus Arteriosus, a VSD, and an Interrupted Aortic Arch - and had open heart surgery at 3 days old. 

Andrew had his 2nd surgery on 11/20/15 and all went well.

Andrew’s 3rd surgery was on 8/25/20 and came out with very poor left ventricular function. He was placed on the heart transplant list on 9/1/20.

Andrew received his beautiful gift of a heart on 1/24/21!

Newest Update

Journal entry by Amber Iseminger

Today we celebrate 3 years! 3 more years then we thought we’d ever get! That beautiful heart continues to beat strongly to hopefully give us many more years to come! I would highly encourage you to sign up to become an organ donor and make sure your family is aware of your wishes! https://donatelife.net/ Imagine the hope and life you could give someone else, someone like Andrew!

A couple things have been going on since the last update!

Andrew continued to have lots of funky blood test results so the team felt it was best to move up his annual catheterization and biopsy to the beginning of December. I was quite nervous going into it and was honestly expecting rejection or coronary artery vasculopathy. Much to my surprise his coronary arteries are still looking great and his rejection levels came back unchanged with that lingering level 1 AMR! His pressures continue to remain elevated so that will be something to keep an eye on. We went in for the rest of the annual appointments at the beginning of January and everything looked great!  We adjusted some meds to help his kidneys and added a 3rd blood pressure med 😳. I’m still waiting to hear if we will repeat the cath in 6 months or wait until the annual. Otherwise we’ll continue with spot checks every 3 months. 

Andrew also had a follow up visit with orthopedics to check on his leg following his heel cord lengthening surgery and his arm fracture. His leg looks great and he has been able to ditch his leg brace during the day. He is thrilled about that! His arm x-ray unfortunately appeared to have healed so well that it has grown extra bone and tethered itself to bones in his wrist. A CT scan confirmed that this is the case and he will now need surgery to disconnect the tethering and close off the growth plates. We will likely do that just after school gets out. If it’s not one thing, it’s another! 

I leave you with this emotional memory. So amazing and a video I will forever treasure. 

God bless the donor family today and every day. While we celebrate, these days must be so difficult for them. 
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