A four-year-old girl in Killeen is living with only half a heart.
A'Vayah Creighton has Congenital Heart Disease, or CHD, and has been fighting for her life since the day she was born.
A'Vayah, like other young girls, loves to play with her dolls. But, if you look closely, you'll notice she's playing what she knows best: doctor and patient.
"I prepared myself not to be a mom," Asha Creighton, A'Vayah's mother, said.
Creighton was told her baby girl only had a 30 percent chance of surviving, and if she did, she'd need heart surgery right away. But, it turned out, A'Vayah's heart was sicker than anyone could have guessed.
"She does indeed have this one particular heart anomaly, but she actually has six others to accompany it," Creighton added, recalling a conversation with A'Vayah's doctors.
So instead of just the one heart surgery, A'Vayah had three all before she was six months old.
"With her having only one pumping chamber, with her being only a single-ventricle child, only one side of her heart is working for all of her body," Creighton said.
A'Vayah's most recent heart surgery helped lessen the strain on her already weak heart.
"I don't take her waking up every day for granted," Creighton added. "If you look at A'Vayah, she looks so perfect. But, if you look under her shirt, you're gonna see the incision from three heart surgeries. You're gonna see the scars from drainage tubes. You're gonna see the scar from having her G-tube removed. You're gonna see what Congenital Heart Disease really looks like."
A'Vayah didn't start showing signs of heart failure until she was 12 days old.
"And had we not learned about her heart disease early on, on accident, and I was sent home with a child who had that 100 percent pulse-ox, at 12 days old, she would've died... and I wouldn't have known why," Creighton said.
There is still a chance A'Vayah will need a heart transplant one day... despite all the surgeries to help her live with just half a heart.
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