Maija’s Story

Site created on September 25, 2020

Welcome to Maija’s 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!

I was born with a congenital Heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot and had open heart surgery when I was 2 months old to repair the numerous defects. Everything was going really well up until I was 15 years old, at which point I started to show signs that part of the original repair was failing. I have been going in every 6 months for the last 5 years and in May of this year my cardiologist told me I would need surgery by the end of the year to put in a pulmonary valve. It’s not exactly the most ideal time for surgery, but I am still looking forward to having a working valve which will improve my health significantly.

My surgery is scheduled for December 14th at Children’s hospital in Minneapolis.

I have my pre-op appt on December 8th and will post an update after that appointment when I know more details.

Thank you for all of your support, love and well wishes!!

Newest Update

Journal entry by Adrienne Johnson

We are home!!! Maija was finally able to take a shower, put on real (but still comfy) clothes, have some lunch and is now resting comfortably in bed! We have all her meds on a nice spreadsheet (more for me than her!) so she stays comfortable while she heals.  She has a follow up visit in 5 days where she will have another xray to check her lungs (she still has some pockets of fluid which have not cleared yet), remove the stitches and check her other incisions. She will also have a holter monitor as she is still going in & out of junctional rhythm and has a pretty low heart rate. We are hoping these issues just clear on their own over time. Overall we really could not have had a better team of doctors, nurses, PAs, PTs, her whole surgical team, and really just everyone at Children’s Hospital. We are very lucky to have had such great care, which allowed her to progress at such an accelerated rate. We were told 7-14 days when we went for the pre op appt, for her to be out in 6 days is just amazing. We also could not have gotten through this without support from all of you, so for that we all thank you so much. Many blessings to all of you for a Merry Christmas, ours came early for sure. ❤️🙏😘
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