Carly's Heart

12/05/2022

Please see below for Carly's memorial service. We miss our sweet sister girl so so much.

Celebrate the life of Carly Maloney, leave a kind word or memory and get funeral service information care of .

12/05/2022

Carly’s memorial service will be held at Cashner Funeral Home in Conroe, Tx on Saturday December 10th 2022 at 10am.

We will be uploading her official Obituary some time tomorrow.

12/03/2022

This isn’t an update we thought we would be posting ever to this page. Yesterday we had a meeting with the ICU, surgeon, and heart failure doctors. After talking with several doctors across the nation and meeting with over 100 doctors to discuss Carly’s complex situation. They came to the conclusion that there was nothing they could do to successfully close her chest and put her back onto the transplant list. Her chest being open and her kidneys still being on the hemoconcentrator made her remain inactive on the transplant list.

Today our sweet Carly Ann Maloney left this earth and gained her angel wings at 1:16pm after only being with us for 102 days❤️ We are devastated at losing our little girl but we know that she is in a better place and feels much better. She will be helping other babies with the same diagnosis, as her doctors are going to study her heart and learn more about her condition; Dilated Cardiomyopathy and Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.

Please continue to pray for our sweet angel and for us as we learn to navigate through this very hard time for our family. Thank you for all of the prayers and support for our family however please allow us time to grieve as a family for our sweet sister girl.

We are so grateful for Texas Children’s Hospital, all of her doctors and nurses that took exceptional care of our little girl. We were truly in the best place possible for her. They gave us more time with her and did everything in their power to help her.

We will be posting memorial information once plans are finalized.

12/01/2022

Hey everyone new update on our little girl Carly!

Carly has been doing ok for the most part but she has had some setbacks the past few days.

Monday November 28th her surgeon attempted to close her chest. While the initial chest closure went fantastic her heart didn’t like having the added pressure. Soon after the decision was made that opening her chest back up would benefit her more than keeping it closed. Her lungs were starting to become damaged because they were not able to fill with air (the pressure from her heart put pressure on her lungs).

She is stable right now and her doctors are working around the clock to help find a solution for our little princess.

Please continue praying for her and for her team of medical doctors as they try to find a plan of action for her. We are in the best place that we can be for our sweet little girl.

One morning I woke up to a reindeer and Christmas lights drawn on her door to enter her room. Brandon and I added pictures of her (I got this idea from a friend of ours that we met at the hospital and the hospital staff loves to walk by and look at them). We do not have a recent picture of her to upload but this is one we will never forget.

11/23/2022

Our baby girl is three months old today!!

Today was a big day for her besides her turning three months old.

She had a chest washout (her surgeon goes in to clean out her open chest and he makes sure everything is going good with her chest being open). This will be her 5th washout as they perform these every 2-3 days to prevent infections.

During the washout procedure she needed an ECMO circuit change. With the ECMO Carly has to be on blood thinners which keeps her circuit clear of blood clots. Blood clots are not 100% preventable since her blood is having to be moved by plastic tubes. The team changes the circuit ever so often and they have been seeing some clots building up in her circuit (these clots are not harmful to her because they are on the side that does not travel back to her body) which makes today the perfect day for a new machine.

Carly was not able to have her chest closed today due to still being a little swollen but she was able to have her RA tube removed (this tube was branching off of her aorta). Ultimately this tube was the main cause of keeping her chest open. With this tube now out she will have her chest closed some time this week or next week. After her chest closes we have 6 weeks of recovery for her sternum to heal.

For her lungs they are still improving everyday and the doctors are very proud of how they have been healing since they started the breathing treatments. Carly is still on the Hemoconcentrator and they are still talking about taking her off but with the circuit change they are waiting till her body gets used to the new circuit. She still has her blood infection unfortunately, they are still seeing the bacteria grow in her blood cultures everyday. They changed the way they are administering her antibiotics due to the ECMO machine filtering out everything that goes through her blood. She is not showing signs of an infection like she was when she first tested positive so the doctors are very happy with that and are just trying to now find the source of her infection.

Please pray that our baby girl keeps improving, that we keep receiving positive news in regards to her lungs, that her blood infection is improving, and that she thrives with her RA tube being removed. This week will be our first major holiday with Carly in the hospital, please pray for our family as we approach this holiday season.

Thank you for all of the continued prayers and love! We appreciate it very very much.

Unfortunately we were unable to take a current picture of Carly however, this picture was taken on Halloween and we couldn’t resist adding this picture.

Happy Thanksgiving from The Maloney Family.

11/17/2022

Carly has been in the Hospital for one month now.

Today we received some good news about Carly!

Her lungs have slightly improved since breathing treatments began. We have a long road ahead to be able to removed from the ECMO machine.

We received news on Monday that Carly had an infection in her blood. She was started on 3 different types of antibiotics until they could determine what infection she had. They grew cultures and were able to pinpoint the infection and is now on one antibiotic to treat it. We are hoping within the next few days she will no longer have the infection.

Earlier this week Carly was put on a Hemoconcentrator (this piece pulls extra fluid off of her body to help her kidneys). Carlys kidney numbers were slightly elevated at the beginning of this week and in order to help her kidneys from backing up and being damaged with all of the fluids she is receiving this was the best approach. We were informed that sometime this weekend or early next week they would be able to take her off of the Hemoconcentrator.

Carly has been working with PT and OT this past two days. She is very comfortable with her right arm above her head and sleeps like this 24/7 just like her big brother. They are coming to work with her to move her arm more because the nurses noticed that her shoulder is getting a little tight and won’t bend all of the way.

Our next few steps are working towards getting her chest closed (its still open but covered from her first surgery), her lungs healing and getting her off ECMO.

The staff here at Texas Children’s Hospital does a fantastic job taking care of our little girl and we know truly that we are in the best place.

Please pray that we keep receiving positive updates for our girl, and that her lungs will continue to heal.

11/14/2022

Hi Everyone,

Carly is one week Post-Surgery!!

She is still on VA-ECMO. The doctors have started Carly on breathing treatments as her lungs are a little damaged due to the extensive surgery she had to undergo. The breathing treatments were started yesterday, and with her morning x-ray there was a very small change in her lungs looking better. Carly will be having a Bronchoscopy performed today to get a better look at her lungs.

We will continue to post every few days. This past week has been about her recovering from surgery. Some days not much has changed with Carly. Most days the goals are the same where the doctors are wanting to see her improve in a certain area.

Please keep her in your prayers that we get good results from the Bronchoscopy and that she will continue to improve more and more each day!

11/08/2022

Carly is out of surgery!!

During surgery the surgeon discovered that not only does she have dilated Cardiomyopathy but she also has Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. This new diagnosis is caused by abnormal genes in her heart muscle. The walls of her left ventricle became thicker than they should have been (this was discovered when she was put on bypass and all of the blood was removed from her heart causing her heart to go back to its correct size). With a thicker heart muscle the amount of blood that is taken in and pumped out to the rest of her body is greatly decreased. This has caused her lungs to be damaged (but her lungs can heal with time) with all of this being said she is now on ECMO till her lungs can recover enough then we will proceed with putting her on the LVAD.

Please send prayers that not only she gets her new heart one day but that her lungs start to heal.

11/07/2022

Hi everyone we have our first update about Carly.

Carly was diagnosed with Dilated Cardiomyopathy on October 19th. Cardiomyopathy is a heart disease that makes it difficult for the heart to pump blood. Her Left Ventricle (the big part of her heart that pumps oxygenated blood to her body) is enlarged and is not working like it should be.

Tomorrow Carly will be undergoing her very first open Heart surgery to have an LVAD (Left Ventricular Assist Device) placed. This pump will help her blood move from the weak side of her heart through a bloop pump that will then pump the blood back to her Aorta to be distributed to the rest of her body.

Please pray for our sweet girl as this will be a 6-8 hour surgery.