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
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