Jenna’s Story

On January 16th, our little girl, Jenna Jean Ripple came into the world. Immediately the doctor noticed something wasn’t quite right with Miss Jenna.  She was looking a little blue, and when they got her hooked up to the O2 monitor, they noticed her SPO2 was not normal.  They then placed her on oxygen, and we were not allowed to hold her.  First thing Monday morning, they did an echocardiogram and sent it up to St. Vincent Hospital in Indy. The cardiologist quickly called back, and suggested we have Jenna transported to Indy ASAP.  It was originally thought that Jenna might have a serious heart defect known as tetralogy of fallot.  The very large ambulance came to pick up Jenna from Regional to transport her to Indy. There were 2 doctors and 2 nurses.  This was a bit overwhelming for us, because we quickly realized that Jenna had a serious problem. 

After starting the prayer chain, and packing, we headed up to Indy to be with Jenna and find out what was going on.  When we arrived at the St Vincent NICU, our Pastor was there waiting for us, along with our men’s ministry leader Scott Tyler.  They had been waiting for us for 5 hours, which really warmed our hearts to know that they cared so much!!!  We then quickly got up to the NICU floor where we got to hold Jenna for the first time, and she wasn’t even on oxygen anymore!!! Praise God!! Miracles do happen.  We met with the cardiologist, and he explained that Jenna did not in fact have tetralogy of fallot.  Instead she had a complex condition called double inlet, double outlet ventricle, with pulmonary stenosis.  This meant that the part of her heart that pumped the blood to her lungs was too small to perform that task properly.  She would need to have 2 surgeries to correct this problem. We were told that this was only the second time our cardiologist had seen this exact heart. Very rare defect.  In fact, you cannot even get an exact result on Google! 

We left that NICU in just 4 days and returned home with our baby girl, where she got to spend her first 4 months of life before going back to Indy for the first of 2 surgeries.  For more information on Jenna’s heart defect, please click on the Caring Bridge link below.  You can also read our ten week long journal to learn about the impact that Jenna had on so many, in her short time here on earth.

http://www.jennasheartmlh.org/