London Horkey, 2, will be honored as the child survivor at the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women event at the Overton Hotel on April 28.
“It’s a miracle,” London’s mom Chelsey Horkey said. “I think that far exceeds any turmoil that we went through for sure.”
Chelsey was 18 weeks pregnant when she found out London would be born with half of a heart.
“That was devastating with your first child,” Horkey said. “You’re so excited to start your family and I had already loved her so much and it was just so daunting to think of the future we had ahead of us.”
Horkey said 1 in 100,000 kids are born with a heart defect and her daughter’s defect is the most rare. A few months later, London was born, her parents said she looked perfect.
“I immediately questioned them,” Horkey said. “I said there can’t be anything wrong with her, she looks great, she’s normal.”
But a few days later, London’s heart condition started to show physically and she had her first surgery at a week old. Her second surgery was scheduled for when she was six months old, but several weeks before London came down with a virus.”
“She was so into heart failure that they were taking surgery off the table because they didn’t think she would make it through the surgery,” Horkey said. “We were in hospice for about six weeks.
But one day everything changed, a scan showed that London’s condition had improved, making surgery possible. So doctors went in to relieve the stress on her heart.
