Winger Lions will host pancake breakfast benefit for Lilly Brtek this Saturday
Tue, 02/13/2018 - 9:27am
admin
The Winger Lions will be sponsoring a benefit for Lilly Brtek, daughter of Angie and Dan Brtek of Winger, and granddaughter of Becky Johnson, Kelly Johnson, and Lucy Brtek all of Winger. The benefit will be held on Feb. 18th from 10 am until 1 pm at Winger Community Center.
The Winger Lions Club will be serving pancakes and sausage with strawberries and whipped cream, and a beverage. There will be a free will donation. Donations will be used to help defray medical and travel expenses.
Lilly is 4 years old and was born with a hole in her heart and as she has gotten older other medical concerns have developed which continue to be evaluated. Lilly has been diagnosed with failure to thrive as well as underdevelopment with a current developmental age of 15 months old. Genetic testing has also been performed to attempt to find out any further medical concerns and these results will be available in March.
Lilly is currently being evaluated by Dr. Rios, of pediatric cardiology. He currently works at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis and provides outreach to Altru in Grand Forks where Lilly has been evaluated.
At Lilly's last checkup, Dr. Rios stated that the hole in her heart was still present and at this point the hole should be closed since it has yet to do it on its own. Lilly subsequently went down November 16th to have an evaluation with Dr. Vezmar who performed the procedure to close the hole in her heart. He works at the Children's Hospital in Minneapolis.
The procedure is called Atrial Septal Defect (ASD) Amplatz placement. An ASD is an abnormal opening (hole) in the wall between the 2 upper chambers of the heart. This hole causes an abnormal flow of the blood between the 2 upper chambers of the heart and results in too much blood flow to the lungs, which may lead to heart failure. The procedure was attempted on the 17th of November but, unfortunately, there were some complications. During the procedure the doctor noticed that her heart wasn't beating like it should and that there was fluid around her heart so he decided to stop the procedure. He removed the fluid that has collected from the heart and noticed a pin size hole in the back of her heart as well. The procedure was stopped in an attempt to allow the additional hole to heal properly.
The doctor feels that this may have occurred as he was performing the primary procedure.
Unfortunately, this means that Lilly had to stay an extra day in the NICU. At this point, the doctor has said he can retry the procedure in 3 months to give the heart time to rest and heal. This procedure is now scheduled for February 21st at the Children's Hospital in Minneapolis.