Meet Maverick
Maverick loves downhill skiing, playing with his cousins and friends, wall climbing and sports of all kinds! Since beginning his life being airlifted to the Stollery, Maverick has continued to defy the odds thanks to the support of his family and his Stollerific team.
As soon as Maverick was born in a small town in Manitoba, doctors knew something was wrong with his heart. He was airlifted to the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton where a surgeon explained to his parents that Maverick needed a complex, lifesaving open-heart surgery to repair nine different things wrong with his heart. At just seven days old, Maverick had an 11-hour surgery to repair his heart. Maverick’s tiny body had gone through so much trauma during the surgery, his heart stopped beating, and he was put on life support. His medical team didn’t know if he would survive, and 22-hours after his surgery, Maverick went into cardiac arrest. Doctors did CPR on the infant for 43 minutes until surgeons could get him back on ECMO life support, a machine to control his heart and lungs. Maverick remained on ECMO for 33 days. During those 33 days, Maverick’s team tried to take him off ECMO, but each time his organs would fail. He lost circulation to his fingers, and they needed to be amputated from one hand. He also had four strokes, four sepsis blood infections, a paralyzed vocal cord and 34 surgeries.
Maverick was not a candidate for a transplant and doctors didn’t expect him to survive. But he did. Maverick spent the next five months in the intensive care unit, until he was finally strong enough to move to the recovery floor where he started growing and getting stronger. After spending nine months at the Stollery, he was finally able to return home to Winnipeg. Unfortunately, shortly after turning one, Maverick crashed and needed to be airlifted back to the Stollery where he had a double coronary artery bypass surgery. Maverick’s family decided it was time to relocate to Edmonton to be closer to the Stollery.
Today, Maverick is followed closely by multiple teams at the Stollery including cardiology and neurology. “Maverick” means one who defies the odds, and through the support of his family and his team at the Stollery, he continues to do just that.