In Support of Dawsons Heart Surgery

Dawson is a very energetic 8 year old boy. Anyone who knows him, knows how impossible it is for him to be still! So, at an early age we got him involved in as many sports as we could. He's fallen in love with wrestling and football and he is always giving 100%. Dawson was born with a heart murmur that we've just kept an eye on. In Nov. 2025 he was competing in a very difficult wrestling tournament where he was profusely sweating, could not breathe, his lips were turning blue, excessively crying, and he almost vomited. This was VERY unlike Dawson in a wrestling tournament, so that day I took him into urgent care as he was checking every warning sign box for a hear murmur. We were then sent to primary children's for an echocardiogram of his heart. 

The echocardiogram showed that the murmur was benign, but he did have another heart condition. He has a Congenital Heart Defect in the form of an Anomalous Right Coronary Artery. This means that his right coronary artery comes off of the aorta at the wrong place (leftward). His comes off of the aorta and travels between the aorta and pulmonary artery. Because of this we had to do further testing. This is a common condition with a lot of people and they would never know that they had it. After doing an in-depth echo, CT, and exercise stress test; we found out that it not only exits at the wrong part of the aorta, but it travels intramurally within the wall of the aorta before exiting at an acute angle. This extra issue with the right coronary artery makes his condition much more dangerous. 

Because Dawson is so involved in sports, we had to make a difficult decision on whether or not we operate to correct the anomalies, or if we just wait to see if there are more warning signs. The number one and most critical side effect of this type of heart defect is sudden cardiac death while exercising. Since his coronary artery has multiple pressure spots, intense exercising is even more dangerous. Due to that possible outcome, and knowing how Dawson is with his sports already at just 8 years old, we made the decision to operate. 

Dawson will be having open heart surgery on November 10, 2026. As much as we hate to ask for help and like to figure out things on our own, we realize the fact that this is going to have a huge impact on our family. We do have some financials figured out within primary children's, but there will be a large portion of the surgery that is not covered with primary children's or insurance. I also will have to miss some work unpaid, as well as we have to continue to take care of our other 3 children. We did not set a goal because we appreciate any help that we can get! 

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Those who would like to help the family can:

Thank you.