A young boy who woke up from a coma with a huge smile on his face is now on a mission to have life-saving surgery.
Baby Michael Labuschagne was only 14 weeks old when he suffered heart failure, his mother Emma shared.
“Words cannot begin to describe the pain we felt in that moment,” Emma wrote on a GoFundMe page they created to help fund medical costs. “We watched our baby breathless, gasping for air while his heart stopped and paramedics worked to save his life. In that moment I did not think Michael would make it through.”
Now 10 months old, Michael miraculously made it through his cardiac arrest, as according to the Journal of the American Heart Association, only less than 6 percent of patients survive from it.
The young fighter was without oxygen for 9 long minutes and he was placed in an induced coma. Michael spent 5 days in the coma before he woke up with a huge smile on his face.
“The first thing he did when he opened his beautiful brown eyes was smile at his daddy,” Emma wrote.
The toddler didn’t suffer any brain damage but he was diagnosed with a cardiac fibroma. Even though the tumor is benign, it may restrict blood flow. According to Boston Children’s Hospital, the condition is often associated with ventricular tachycardia and arrhythmias or abnormal heart rhythms.
The tot has been outfitted with a defibrillator and internal pacemaker but the machines have ‘caused physical developmental delay.’ They are also not working as efficiently as they should be.
“The cardiac surgeons at Boston are *fact* the best cardiac surgeons in the world and they have done this operation several times,” Emma wrote. “They are confident that they can drastically improve, or even cure, his condition by resecting the tumor.”
The parents are now on a mission to raise the $142,000 needed for the procedure.
“The dream is to get him to Boston as soon as we can,” the GoFundMe page reads. “Every day we worry if it will be our last with Michael.”
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