Leo Zellers Leo: Our Heart Warrior

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.Leo has had a VSD since birth, a fairly common Congenital Heart Defect. Although the doctors predicted it would close on its own, recent echocardiograms have shown that open heart surgery to close the hole is necessary. We wanted to open up this page to share Leo's progress while he recovers in the Cardiac ICU the third week in February. Leo is pretty asymptomatic at this point. His amazing surgeon seemed surprised by his strength and energy considering his hole between the two ventricles has stretched and is quite large. The only "symptom" thus far is sweating and being a bit small. He is confident that after surgery he should thrive and grow keeping up with his big brother and sisters! We just have had so many people ask how they can help and what is going on that we thought this was the best way to communicate with our friends and family. Just keep Leo in your prayers. Many of you know that we found Grace's cancer at 8 months of age and she had her surgery just a bit younger than Leo. IT is hard to believe that we will be placing one of our littles in the hands of a surgeon...but we have been blessed with 4 beautiful children and we know that all be OK...just need to make it through the next few weeks! Leo is LOUD trying to get a word in this crazy household, he babbles, shouts and says "hello" to everyone. He is super friendly, enjoys making phone calls and waving and smiling. He loves to eat, but hates having his diaper changed...it is like wrangling a small animal and he often can get away without a thing covering his bare bum! He is still an AWFUL sleeper in typical Zellers baby fashion and spends a lot of his time napping in the car since his mom is always driving his siblings around town! He crawls everywhere, gets into everything and is just starting to cruise around furniture. I am pretty sure his favorite part of the day is when his siblings get home from school and his daddy walks through the door after work!!!