From Story’s mom, Lauren
Story was born with a severe congenital heart defect, and we knew, prenatally. And we also knew that Nationwide Children’s Hospital was the best care for her. So, we got to come up here and stay here for a few days before she was actually born. Now, we’ve been coming up here for a while. She had three heart surgeries, with the third one being a heart transplant. And so now we come up every three months to just make sure her heart’s still doing well.
In her first year of life, we were in and out of the hospital every couple of weeks. But when she had her heart failure, we had to be airlifted back up here, and that was May of 2014. So, we stayed probably about four months or so, which isn’t as long as they thought it would be, but it was a pretty lengthy stay.
During that time, we were so thankful for being able to stay here and know that we had a warm meal and were able to come back and have a little break from the hospital so we could get showers and take care of ourselves. Me and my mother-in-law would switch off, or me and Adam [dad] would switch off. We’re so thankful.
Seeing people that we’ve known and seen all these years here at the House, it really does make us feel at home.
Story was taken by ambulance last summer because of a rejection for her heart, so we didn’t know how long we would be here. It was a little less than a week and they were able to get her heart doing well. It was so helpful knowing that we had the Ronald McDonald House to come to, and we didn’t have to worry or stress about finding a place to stay, and that we would have a home here while she was in the hospital.
We’re going to be here every few months, but her heart’s been doing really well lately. We got a good checkup today. She just got out of her clinic visit and we were able to come back over here to the House.
I promised her that she could play in the Zoo Room before we had to head back home because they love it here so much, and it really does make her appointments better for her, because she gets really anxious about going to the doctor’s appointments. But when we tell her that we get to go to the Ronald McDonald House, she’s like, ‘Okay, I think it will be okay then.’
This House is truly a second home for us, and our home-away-from-home. So it makes it better when we have to come up here. It honestly does hold a special place in our heart, our whole family.
Whenever we go through McDonald’s, we always round up. And even if they don’t ask us, we’re like, ‘Can we round up for the Ronald McDonald House?’, you know, Violet, the youngest one, will see the little the Ronald McDonald House on the Happy Meal boxes and she says, “That’s the Ronald McDonald House. I want to go! Can we go yet?’ And when we come to the House and we see the hearts in the hallway – with Story’s situation – we’re always looking for hearts, so we’ve taken pictures with almost all the hearts down that hallway.
