Bryce Kelley, a five-year-old who had life-saving heart surgery at four-months-old served as the Heart Hero at the Westchester Heart Walk on Saturday, Sept. 23 at Kensico Dam.
“The pediatric doctor noticed a heart murmur that wasn’t going away three days after Bryce was born, which doctors said usually went away in most babies,” said Erin Kelley, Bryce’s mother. “We learned that Bryce was diagnosed with ventricular septal defect and needed surgery because her heart was working way to hard and she wasn’t gaining weight.”
Ventricular septal defect is a birth defect of the heart in which there is a hole in the wall (septum) that separates the two lower chambers (ventricles) of the heart.
“Bryce struggled to eat at times because she didn’t seem to have the strength to digest the food, she was either congested or too tired. She only ate at most three ounces at a time. She spit up a lot when we seemed to over feed her,” said Kelley. “During the day she ate around every two hours and at night around every three hours. She slept a lot after the feeding because it was a lot of work for her heart to work. It was burning a lot of calories because it was pumping very fast.”
On March 20, 2018, Bryce underwent five hours of heart surgery, but it wasn’t the traditional open heart surgery. Doctors performed a transverse axillary incision that accessed her heart under her right arm rather than splitting the breastbone. They collapsed her lung and entered her heart where they put a patch to close the hole.
This approach reduced Bryce’s recovery time as she only stayed two nights in the hospital (the night after the surgery and then a second night).
Today Bryce is a very happy healthy five-year-old. She loves music, arts and crafts, reading and pretending. She is a very typical lovely child who wants to help everyone and be heard. She loves playing with her two-year-old brother and has many friends.
