Pushing
Forward With Southern Leisure Spas & Patios by Steve Gamel | photos courtesy of Southern Leisure
N
o parent should ever be told that their child has a life-threatening health condition. But for Cole and Amber Taylor, those words became their reality in the blink of an eye. Shortly after the happiest day of their life, doctors informed the Taylors that their newborn daughter, Madison, had three congenital heart defects.
The news was a lot for any two people to swallow for many reasons. For starters, sweet Madison was only a few days old, having been born on February 23, 2020. Surgeons told them that not only did she have heart defects, but Madison only had a 60-40 chance of making it to her first birthday. The road ahead would be long, confusing, and painful. And on top of that, Cole’s hot tub business, Southern Leisure Spas & Patio, was up in the air because of COVID-19 — making the financial piece of doing everything possible for Madison even that much more difficult. “We were struggling in March and April that year because of COVID-19 restrictions, so I’m telling my wife, ‘it’s been a bad month. I may need to trade my truck in for something smaller. We may need to make some cuts here. I may have to go a couple of weeks without pay,’” Cole was recently quoted as saying in another publication. “Without shattering her emotionally, I was trying to prepare her for what might be coming — on top of everything going on personally.” The good news is that more than a year later, Madison is thriving. Granted, she’s had two open-heart surgeries and has a third on the way. But as her parents
52 | FLOWER MOUND TOWN LIFE | APRIL 2021
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