Posted: Mar 31, 2014 1:37 PM Updated: Apr 01, 2014 6:58 AM By Brent Solomon – bio | email
FREDERICKSBURG, VA (WWBT) – A Fredericksburg family is making major sacrifices to save their two-year-old daughter.
Ayla Campbell was born with half a heart. Since then, she’s been in and out of the hospital to stay alive. Now, her family is fighting to get her a potentially life-saving heart transplant.
The two-year-old has overcome a lot, including spending the first six months of her life in a hospital bed with constant visits to doctor’s offices, but her family believes the miracle she needs is on the way.
“She’s had two open heart surgeries,” her mother Catherine Campbell said.
At four months old, she almost died.
“It took the hospital 25 minutes to bring her back. She suffered strokes, and brain damage and seizures and everything all within 24 hours,” she said.
Ayla pulled through. Right now, she takes 12 medications a day and her journey is far from over. She now needs a heart transplant. Her mother has quit her job to care for Ayla full-time. The family is even moving from Fredericksburg to Richmond to be closer to relatives and closer to UVA Medical Center in hopes of getting the call that doctors have a match.
“I think they said two hours from the time they get the heart, they have two hours to put it in the body. That’s why we need to move closer, because we’re two hours now from the hospital. When we move, we’ll be an hour,” Campbell said.
It will mean a four-hour daily commute for work for her father, but when it comes to saving your child, no distance is too much.
“No one really knows what you’re going through until you go through it yourself with your own child,” Michael Campbell said.
Since little Ayla has been beating the odds for two years now, this close family is convinced they’ve come too far to give up.
“That’s all that matters. She’s alive. She has that chance,” Catherine Campbell said.
As the family prepares for this new transition, they say they can’t help but hope and believe better days are ahead for Ayla. They have created a Facebook page in her honor for anyone who would like to follow her progress
Comments