Our Motivation for starting Play For A Heart

Our family has a passionate interest in Congenital Heart Disease because of our daughter, Libby. Libby was diagnosed with a very serious Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) at 8 weeks old. Since open-heart surgery was our only option for treatment, she under went a 5 hour procedure to reconstruct her heart. Now, she is an active and healthy 7 year-old; however, we have several more open-heart surgeries in her future as she outgrows her initial repair. Unfortunately, Libby's story is not uncommon, because CHD effects 40,000 each year in the U.S. 25 years ago, these children did not survive. As invasive as these surgeries are, we feel fortunate to be living in this modern era when medical advances allow many children with CHD to live relatively normal lives. Medical progress is being made daily, but this disease remains grossly under funded relative to the number of children impacted. Our hope and our passion is to raise funds that support research and medical advances to make these extremely invasive surgeries remnants of the past. We organized Play for a Heart to make a difference in the lives of CHD children.