My pregnancy was pretty normal, said her mom, Olivia Guthrie. Everything was fine.
There were no signs of the heart failure that would follow three months later. She was a very easy baby, said Guthrie, and was adored by her siblings, who are 15 months, 3 and 12.
She would smile and follow you around with her eyes, Guthrie said. The hardest part about Zaria was waking up every two or three hours to feed her, she said.
Things changed. On Jan. 4, Zaria began to stop eating. She was constipated and not urinating. Then she began panting.
When Guthrie brought her to the pediatrician Jan. 8, she was told to take her immediately to the emergency room at Dell Children s Medical Center, where doctors have been building a new heart program more quickly than most children s hospitals have.
7 Austin stories that made us smile in 2020
OK, so, we re all agreed that there was a lot of bad news this year.
On behalf of the Austin360 team, we d like to thank you for sticking with us this year. It s been brutal. As we peer into 2021 with that little spot of light just poking out of this damned tunnel we wanted to remember some good things. There were good things! Promise.
Here are seven lifestyle and entertainment stories we reported in 2020 that gave us hope, made us feel closer to the community and, dare we say, could be called good news.
Dell Children s heart transplant patient discharged, given parade
Dell Children’s heart transplant patient discharged, given parade
It’s been 144 days since Gerardo Ramirez, Jr. was admitted to Dell Children s for end-stage heart failure with a condition that made his heart muscle abnormally thick.
AUSTIN, Texas - A holiday parade that rolled by the entrance of the Dell Children s Medical Center Wednesday morning created a lot of smiles. While most were hidden by protective masks, the one from Gerardo Ramirez, Jr. could not be contained. It is a lot of good energy, said Ramirez.
He is feeling the energy of the holiday season because of a gift of a new heart. That made his discharge from the hospital possible and made for an early Christmas gift that had everyone cheering.
After 144 days at Dell Children s Medical Center, Junior is home for Christmas.
Gerardo Ramirez and Myrna Arguello remember carrying their son into Dell Children s on Aug. 1. He kept fainting. We didn t know how bad he was, Arguello says. He was not telling us.
His heart was failing.
On a scale in which they measure cardiac illness between 0 to 4, with 4 being the worst, Gerardo Ramirez Jr., who likes to be called Junior, was a 4-plus, says Dr. Charles Fraser Jr., chief of the Texas Center for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease at Dell Children’s and UT Health Austin, the clinical practice of Dell Medical School at the University of Texas. He was really sick. He was right at death s door.