The Beacon 2018 | Issue 2 Final Beacon - April 2018 PDF | Page 4

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: EMERY NUNNALLY By: Sarah Nunnally, Emery’s Mother I n February of 2012, Emery Grace Nunnally was born six weeks early. While I was pregnant she was diagnosed with two different heart defects, a large Atrial Septal Defect (ASD) and Ebstein’s Anomaly. She was tiny and beautiful at 3 pounds and 13 ounces. We finally got to take her home from the NICU one month later on several medications to prevent heart failure and on home oxygen. She had regular cardiac appointments, and by the time she was four months old she had started showing signs of heart failure and was not gaining weight. She had her first open heart surgery to fix her ASD in June 2012, and came home in a week looking like a different baby. She was growing and pink and eating like never before. Two weeks later she started having trouble breathing so we were admitted into the PICU and her echo showed fluid surrounding her heart from her previous surgery. She underwent a procedure to drain it, and had a rare com- plication which resulted in what was later determined to be a stroke. We were told by the surgeon that the grace of God was with her in the OR, which is why she was still with us. We were devastated for her and she spent the next few weeks recovering in the PICU. Over the next few months, we noticed Emery not meeting her developmental milestones and showing weakness on her right side. While we didn’t have a MRI confirmation of a stroke, our therapists treated her as a stroke patient based on her symptoms. We put her in private therapy and 4 | THE BEACON