To make matters worse, the American embassy in Nigeria denied my husband a visa so he couldn’t join me and I had to juggle this new normal plus care for a 2-year-old. I don’t know how I juggled all that, remained sane and still took and passed the licensing exam.
KK had to go through years of physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. Per her diagnosis, she would need open-heart surgery periodically for the rest of her life because they surgically had to create a vessel in her heart (called a CONDUIT) so it wouldn’t grow with her as she gets older and the conduit could get constricted and would need to be changed out over time.

They said the next time she would need surgery could be around 5 years old but the devil threw in a wrench and by January of 2011, they noticed scar tissue that was causing the conduit to get clogged. They tried to get rid of it by a less evasive procedure called a cardiac catheterization where they access the heart through a tube inserted from the groin. That procedure was carried out in March of 2011, at the time KK was a little over 6 months old but it wasn’t successful so to my greatest disappointment, at 8 months, KK had to undergo another open-heart surgery much sooner than expected. 

KK went through open-heart surgeries, tracheotomy, g button insertion, cardiac catheterization, mandibular distraction (where they had to surgically pull her small chin forward), hours upon hours of physical, occupational and speech therapy, hard and soft palate repair, endocarditis and another open heart surgery at 6 years old making it 3 so far, years of breathing through the neck and feeding through the stomach, serious reflux, lots of medication and doctor visits and a host of wonderful nurses who became family over the years and God made her story beautiful.