Four Year-old Sienna needs a new heart. While she waits for one, she is doing cardiac rehabilitation while being connected to a Ventricular Assistive Device, known as VAD. It is like an artificial heart, where it takes blood in her body to pump her heart. Dr. Dan Ziebell is the medical doctor of the cardiac fitness program at Primary Children’s Hospital, where Sienna is being treated.
“Sienna’s case is unique because she is very young, and she's on this ventricular assist device, which is a mechanical pump that helps her heart circulate blood. And we're doing cardiac rehab with her while she's connected to this device. So we're getting her physically active, and we're getting her body physically conditioned while she's connected to this mechanical heart device,” Dr. Ziebell said.
Before Sienna was connected to VAD, She was diagnosed with Hypoplastic left heart syndrome, at just 20 weeks-old, where the left side of her heart did not form properly. This essentially means she has half a heart, a very rare condition.
Through this program, she exercises three days out of the week at the hospital.
“She needs a heart transplant, and she's been waiting for about two years now, connected to this artificial heart pump, and so in the past year and a half, we've been working with her to get her physically stronger, ultimately, to prepare her for this heart transplant,” said Dr. Ziebell.
According to her mother Francesca Barton, Sienna now has more energy than ever.
“She runs around the hospital. She runs the hospital. It's always singing and dancing and she is just having such a wonderful childhood despite, you know, living in a hospital for over two years. It's allowed her to have at least some semblance of a childhood. We are grateful, we have a lot of support and a wonderful village to help us get through this. We can’t do it without them,” said Barton.
Barton added the best gift anyone can give is to donate their organs for others.
