STCU helps keep kids on the move
Donate to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals from June 24 to July 5. Your gift helps sick kids just be kids.
When you’re 5 and you’ve lived through three open heart surgeries, you’re still 5.
Like when Elliott Naftzger ― who loves coloring, singing, and the “Thriller” video ― admires her lips in the mirror. To her parents and doctors, their purplish hue signals low oxygen levels. To Elliott, purple lips are glamorous lips. “Oh, my lips are so gorgeous,” she’ll tell her reflection. Elliott has hypoplastic left heart syndrome, signs of her condition first detected during Rachel’s routine 20-week ultrasound. The left side of her heart was severely underdeveloped, too small to do its job: collecting oxygen-rich blood from the lungs and pumping it to the body. By 30 weeks into Rachel’s pregnancy, doctors at Sacred Heart had used a fetal echocardiogram to confirm the diagnosis and presented Rachel and Carter with a medical plan. Rachel would deliver Elliott at Sacred Heart, where the baby would need a ventilator and medication before undergoing, at 4 days old, the first of three planned open-heart surgeries.
Parents and hospital staffs know: Sick kids are still kids. Donations to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals help pay for programs that make it easier for hospitalized kids to be themselves, despite their illness or injury. CMNH also helps pay for diagnostic and lifesaving equipment along with support services, research, and training.
And when you give to CMNH through STCU, every dollar goes to a local hospital ― to Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital if you live in the Spokane-North Idaho region. STCU’s fundraising campaign runs June 24 – July 5.
Donations to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals help pay for programs that make it easier for hospitalized kids like Elliott to be themselves.
