Celebrate Heart Month with CMN Champion Sammy!

This February, patients, families, and staff at Ann & Robert H Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago are celebrating American Heart Month. It’s an important celebration for the thousands of patients treated in our Heart Center each year, like Sammy.

The Heart Center at Lurie Children’s, ranked 2nd in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, brings a variety of cardiac specialists together to care for patients with the most complex and serious heart conditions throughout their lifespans — from before birth, through childhood and into adulthood. As the region’s largest children’s heart center, our care team helps kids with any heart-related condition, from fetal cardiology to cardiac disease prevention to heart transplantation.

Sammy and her family know the Lurie Children’s Heart Center well.  When Sammy showed flu-like symptoms after Thanksgiving in 2016, her parents brought her to their local emergency department, and she was quickly transported to Lurie Children’s. There her parents were told she was extremely critical and had little hope of survival. Doctors at Lurie Children’s Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) determined a rare virus attacked Sammy’s heart, causing her body to go into septic shock. She underwent emergency open-heart surgery and spent the next several weeks recovering at the CCU with the support of her family and team of caregivers. She survived, but as a result Sammy has complex medical needs that will require continuous care at Lurie Children’s. “Today we’re counting our blessings that she’s smiling, dancing and laughing,” her mother Marissa says.

This month, wear red in honor of Sammy and the many other Heart Center patients who rely on the hospital every day for quality care!