Owen Heaps Owen Daniel Heaps

First post: Aug 9, 2016 Latest post: Aug 28, 2016
Owen Daniel Heaps was born on August 2nd at 12:57am. He came out as cool as a cucumber and has remained the strong, silent type for is first 5 days (in contrast with his sister who has blazed a trail of chaos from the moment she was born). If you are reading this you probably know that at his 20 week ultrasound, Owen was diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot with Pulmonary Atresia. It's almost like he was taking cheap shots at his father's inability to spell in utero. This diagnosis essentially means that Owen has a hole between the two lower chambers of his heart and that his right ventricle doesn't have the tube it needs to connect to the arteries that take blood to his lungs. While this condition is quite rare, we are hopeful that it is also very treatable. From everything that we have been told, we are dealing with the Michael Jordan (Jaylon Smith?) of neonatal cardiac surgery here at Stanford. The plan is for Owen to have surgery at 7am on Tuesday, August 9th. We hope that he will only be out of his mother's arms for 6-8 hours. If all goes well, Owen will be in the hospital for 2-3 weeks while he builds up the strength to come home. This will give him plenty of time to get posted up on his sofa in Chicago to watch the Irish route Texas labor day weekend (his words, not mine).

We are utterly speechless at the outpouring of love and support that our friends and family have shown in the last 20 weeks. Our son will grow to be strong, kind, and selfless because that is all he will ever see from those closest to our family. We hope that he has been given the unique opportunity to truly appreciate how fragile life is and to know that it should not be wasted. We will post updates when there is news.

All of our love,

Zac, Katie, Maddie, and Owen

CaringBridge is a nonprofit social network dedicated to helping family and friends communicate with and support loved ones during a health journey. Learn more about CaringBridge.

To interact with Owen’s website, sign in or register today.

By registering with CaringBridge, you will join over 300,000 people a day who are supporting friends and family members.

Sign In Or Register
SVG_Icons_Back_To_Top
Top