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PROVO — Friends of a 5-year-old girl born with a severe congenital heart defect have started a campaign to garner cards for what may be her last Valentine’s Day.
Provo resident Rachel Faul said her daughters, Abigail and twin sister Lilith, were born with autism in 2009. Faul said Abigail was also born with Hypoplastic Right Heart Syndrome, a condition in which the right side structures of the heart are undeveloped.
“At first, when (the doctors) were looking at the ultrasound before she was born, they weren’t even positive if it was hypoplastic right or hypoplastic left because it seems that her heart sort of twisted when it grew,” Faul said. “Not to be crass, but it sort of looked like Picasso had designed her heart during his Cubist phase.”
Abigail had to have her first open heart surgery when she was a few days old and had a shunt put in, Faul said. The next heart surgery occurred when Abigail was around 5 months old, and when she was almost 1, she had her third heart surgery.
Faul said Abigail suffered complications after each surgery and had several health problems as a result. When she was 3, Abigail had her fourth and final open heart surgery. Her lungs kept filling with fluid and doctors said it was a result of heart failure, Faul said.
“It was hard to take,” she said. “We knew that a lot of these kids eventually have heart failure, but they are more likely to get it when they are 15 or 20 years old.”
Faul said because Abigail was very fragile, the doctors didn’t feel she would be able to survive a heart transplant. The family took her home on hospice care in December 2012.
“(Doctors) gave her at max, a few months to live, but she has done well on hospice,” she said. “Yes, she is fragile and there are a lot of scary times, but she’s still with us over two years later. And we are grateful for every day we have with her.”
Faul’s childhood friend, Carly Gourley, said she was aware of the struggle that Faul and her husband, Josh, were going through with paying for medical bills, and after another friend set up an online fundraising account,* Gourley decided to start a campaign to give the family emotional support.
“I think sometimes you don’t really know what to do for people,” Gourley said. “You feel like whatever you would do, it wouldn’t be enough, it wouldn’t make a difference, it wouldn’t make an impact. And you feel it would be insufficient so you don’t act… We figured if we could do something for Abigail and for the family to bring them a little hope, and of course this is the time of year that people send valentines, so it just seemed like the perfect thing to do for her.”
Gourley started the “Hearts for Abigail” campaign in an effort to get valentines for the 5-year-old so she would have “something tangible they could hold onto and they know that people out there actually do care,” she said. A Henderson, Nevada, resident, Gourley said several schools in the Las Vegas area are participating in the campaign and made Valentine’s Day cards to send to Abigail.
“Sometimes you think people are too wrapped up in themselves or they don’t care enough to spend the time worrying about someone else,” Gourley said. “But there are so many people out there that have gotten so excited about it and they actively search out things like this… That has been fantastic to know that so many people want to find things like this (campaign).”
Anyone interested in sending Valentine’s Day cards or letters to Abigail can mail them to 65 Park Ave., Provo, UT 84606.
Another similar campaign recently garnered more than 189,000 Christmas cards for a terminally ill Fountain Green girl.
*KSL.com has not verified the accuracy of the information provided with respect to the account nor does KSL.com assure that the monies deposited to the account will be applied for the benefit of the persons named as beneficiaries. If you are considering a deposit to the account you should consult your own advisors and otherwise proceed at your own risk.
