William Pollacci William Pollacci

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family & friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support, words of encouragement and prayers. Thank you for visiting.

William was born on July 8, 2017 and shortly after birth we discovered that William had some serious health issues. He had his first operation to address esophageal atresia at two days old. He then had open heart surgery at two months old to repair his tetralogy of fallot heart defect. He spent seven weeks in the PICU at Blair Batson Hospital in Jackson, MS recovering from heart surgery. He had a tough time getting off the ventilator and that was when we first grasped how severe his tracheomalacia was. After coming home from heart surgery, William had several events where he stopped breathing at home immediately after a feeding. These terrifying events prompted us to seek a second opinion from an airway specialist at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. Their diagnostics revealed to us that William had a rare laryngeal cleft. That discovery led Ryan and I to do some more digging on children with severe tracheomalacia. That was when we found out about Boston Children's Hospital's Esophageal & Airway Treatment Center. In September 2018, we had our initial consult with Dr. Russell Jennings, who has pioneered work in kids with rare trachea problems. Dr. Jennings plans to repair four things in William's airway this Thursday, December 20th. This site is meant to keep our family & friends abreast of William's progress during his recovery.