Featured patient of the week is Reagan Gallegos. Reagan is the daughter of Zach and Shelby Gallegos and is currently in the trenches of her CDH journey. Reagan is a fighter and will be celebrating her 6 month birthday this week. She was born at Johns Hopkins in MD, but recently was transferred to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) where her care team are constantly evaluating her treatment to prepare her for open heart surgery. Zach had this to share with CDH International:
“In September of 2020, after our 20 week appointment, we found out that our daughter, Reagan, has CDH. We were referred to John’s Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD to verify the diagnosis as well to start her treatment. She underwent the FETO procedure in November and was born at the end of December 2020.
Reagan was born on December 23, 2020 and was repaired on December 27th. The surgery was a success and she thrived in the NICU. In March, her pulmonary hypertension flared up and she was intubated and moved to the PICU where they determined that she needed to have her ASD and VSD in her heart repaired.
As of writing this, on June 21, 2021, we are currently at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Reagan will be having her ASD and VSD repair on June 22nd. If all goes well, the doctors will be able to focus on getting her extubated again and working on fixing the pulmonary hypertension so that we can take a baby home.”
Zach also shared with us that, “Reagan was born with a hole in her diaphragm on the left. Coupled with her CDH, she also has CHD (2 holes in her heart), and pulmonary hypertension. Reagan also is missing the nails on both of her pinky’s. While she was extubated (after only 1 week from birth), she never really cried but “whined” like Walugi (a character from the Mario games, look it up its funny). She quickly became the most popular baby while we were at John’s Hopkins.”
The Gallegos Family currently has a GoFundMe page set up to help raise money to give Zach and Shelby the ability to give Reagan the care she needs. Any funds that are not used will be donated to CDH International (to help save the cherubs) and the Ronald McDonald House (so they can continue to house families who have to relocate to help give their child the best care). Please visit the family’s GoFundMe at https://gofund.me/44648195.
