For much of her short life, the Alberta Children’s Hospital was Emmy’s home. She was born with a congenital heart defect and had four major heart operations in her first five months and many other medical challenges during her young life. Ten hours after her first surgery, at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton, she went into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated with CPR for 30 minutes, put on ECMO to let her fragile heart recover and hemodialysis for her kidneys. Following her operations in Stollery, the province’s pediatric cardiac centre, she would return to the Alberta Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). After spending 206 days in an ICU from birth, she graduated to Unit 3 last January. Because the cardiac arrest impacted her kidneys, she was also monitored closely by nephrologists. She spent the next three months in Unit 3 on dialysis. After eight months in hospital, they were finally going to go home.
The day before they were to be discharged is a day Juliana and Steve will cherish forever. They took little Emmy for a walk around the University District in her stroller. They went for lunch as a family and walked the aisles of Save On Foods with her, showing her all the sights of the grocery store. It was her first taste of “normal” life – Juliana even changed her diaper in a public bathroom for the first time. They returned to the hospital to spend one final night. That night though, she spiked a fever, and bloodwork revealed high potassium and sodium levels. Her condition deteriorated into the early morning hours and she went into sepsis and cardiac arrest, and despite her medical team’s best efforts, sadly Emmy passed away.
Through their grief, Juliana and Steve have received incredible grief support through one-on-one and group counselling sessions at Rotary Flames House. There, the social worker team provides a safe place for bereaved families to share about their child while learning coping strategies for dealing with their loss and ways to keep their memories alive. Through their group, they have been able to connect with other parents on their own grief journey.
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Emmy never got to live at home, however her parents keep her urn next to her favourite Care Bear in her crib in her nursery where they can say good morning and goodnight to her each day. They are also keeping her memory alive through the Emmy Strong Initiative they created that raises money and runs toy drives for the hospital and other organizations. They have so much love and appreciation for their entire medical team at the Alberta Children’s Hospital who became their family and Emmy’s home.
