CAPTURING HEARTS

Article Provided by Sanford Health

Anyone who meets Anna Olivia Marcy can tell she is one very special little girl. With a smile that will steal your heart, she caught the attention of everyone who walked into her hospital room.

“I think she just captured their hearts,” said Anna’s mom Beverly Marcy. “Her personality, smile and just the way she responded to things… She always wanted to say thank you to whoever was there. Whether it was the nurse, the person bringing her food or the cleaning staff, she wanted to let everyone know how grateful she was. I think it i s rare to fi nd such a spirit of gratitude and strength in someone so young.”

A difficult road

Anna is the 2015 Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals North Dakota Champion and the honor is well-deserved. Last summer Anna’s parents noticed she was gaining a little weight around her midsection over a short period of time.

“We went through a few steps and after an ultrasound discovered it was a buildup of fluid coming from her shunt,” said Anna’s dad Greg.

Before Anna had her first birthday or even met the people who are now her parents, she had surgery to place a shunt in her birth country of Azerbaijan. Anna was born with hydrocephalus, a condition where fluid accumulates around the brain. The common treatment is to reroute this fluid to another area of the body, most commonly the abdomen, where it can be absorbed safely back into the bloodstream.

Anna had the fluid drained and was sent home with appointments set for the following week. However, over the weekend Anna’s abdomen again began filling with fluid. She was admitted into the pediatric intensive care unit where the fluid was drained and a cause was found.

“Usually when patients have shunt infections, they occur soon after the device is placed,” said Tong Yang, MD, pediatric neurosurgeon at Sanford Children’s Fargo. “But in Anna’s case, it was a slow-growing bacteria that didn’t present until almost four years later.”

A long wait

Anna’s shunt would have to come out and an external one placed to relieve her body from the building fluid.

“It was a challenge for us and for her,” said Greg. “An almost 6-year-old doesn’t just sit in bed very well. She wanted to be up and moving, but with the external shunt she really couldn’t. If we turned it off for more than 20 minutes she would get a headache.”

Anna was in the hospital for more than 30 days as the external shunt drained the fluid. Once it was under control, Yang and the team at Sanford Children’s made a plan to hopefully fix the issue for good.

“Replacing Anna’s shunt in the original location was no longer a viable option for her,” said Dr. Yang. “The infection had made it a hostile environment. So we elected to place it through a vein near the heart.”

A happy result

Anna is now doing well and excited to take on the role of Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals North Dakota Champion.

“When we were approached about it, we knew we wanted to help,” said Beverly. “We received such amazing care from the team at Sanford Children’s and the Children’s Miracle Network that we really wanted to give back.”

“Watching our child go through this was so difficult,” recalled Greg. “But hopefully by sharing our story and drawing attention to the work done through Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, we can help make it a little easier for another family going through a similar situation.”