CDHi welcomes Jessica Cummings to our new Support Team. Jessica is the mom to CDH Angel Nathaniel.
Jessica Cummings has worked for the University of Pittsburgh for over 15 years and is currently in a Critical Care Medicine lab researching sepsis. She has been married to her husband, Chris since 2005 and they live north of Pittsburgh. They are the parents to four beautiful kids, Dominick, Lydia, Clayton, and CDH angel Nathaniel. Nathaniel was born in September 2011 and passed away at 23 days old.
Nathaniel’s LCDH was discovered at his 18-week ultrasound. Given an initial lung to head ratio of 0.2, Nathaniel had less than 20% chance at survival. To give him his best shot at survival Jessica and Chris visited both San Francisco, CA and Providence, RI to discuss fetal tracheal occlusion. The day before the tracheal occlusion, another ultrasound was done and his lung to head ratio had increased to 1 and he was no longer a candidate for the surgery. Nathaniel was born at Magee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh and transported directly to Children’s Hospital and placed on ECMO.
Nathaniel went through two relatively uneventful ECMO circuit changes. At 23 days old, his second ECMO circuit was clotting so Jessica and Chris made the decision to remove him from ECMO. He lived for 26 hours after being removed.
Jessica has volunteered for CHERUBS/CDH International in various support roles.
If you are interested in volunteering and working with other CDH families, email volunteer@cdhi.org.
