Welcome! And Thank You in Advance!

Hello! We are the Stout's! Stewart and I have been married for almost 3 ½ years. We have 2 little boys, Hayden who is almost 2, and Keagan who is 4 months old.

Since Stewart and I met, he has been sick. We didn’t know how serious it was until just over 2 years ago, when he was sent from work to the ER in an ambulance. I was 4 months pregnant with Hayden at the time. We found out that what had been making Stewart so sick was Atrial Fibrillation. We saw 2 Cardiologists in Cache Valley, where we live, before we were sent to Salt Lake and the Intermountain Medical Center. We saw Dr. John Day and he immediately said that Stewart needed a Radio-Frequency Ablation. On June 26, 2008, Stewart had his surgery. I was 6 months pregnant at the time. Everything went really well with the surgery! They found not only Atrial Fibrillation, but they also found Atrial Flutter. They were able to fix the spots that they found and we were certain that he would be better.

The week after Stewart’s surgery, I went into Pre-term labor. We were able to hold off having the baby until I made it to 38 weeks. Hayden was born on Aug 19, 2008, weighed 9 lbs 3 oz and was 22 inches long. He was perfect! Stewart felt better and a month after Hayden was born was able to return to work.

We enjoyed almost a year of Stewart feeling better, until I got another call telling me that he was once again in an ambulance on his way to the ER. On June 23, 2009, Stewart had his 2nd Ablation. This time they found that he has AV Nodal Re-Entry Tachycardia. It’s something that most people are born with and causes abnormal rhythms. They fixed what they saw and we crossed our fingers that this would be the last one.

We celebrated Hayden’s 1st birthday and found out we were expecting again in August. Stewart wasn’t feeling any better, and we decided to try one more ablation. On August 25, 2009, Stewart had his 3rd Ablation. Although he didn’t feel 100% better, he went back to work in January of 2010. By February 5, 2010, he was back home. He went to his doctor again and we decided to have another doctor perform ANOTHER ablation. We hoped that having a new set of eyes on the situation would help solve the problem. In February, he had his 4th ablation.

After each surgery, we can tell if it has worked within about a week. See, Stewart faints anywhere from 4-40 times a day. He will be sitting and talking to you, and then say, “I’m going to pass out.” Then he’s gone. He doesn’t breath while he’s unconscious. And sometimes when he wakes up he still can’t breath. It’s very scary and happens over and over again. If he passes out less often, then the surgery was successful, but if nothing has changed then it didn’t.

During his 4th surgery, they didn’t find anything new. Instead they treated the same areas that they had previously treated. Because instead of Stewart’s heart scarring, it healed. It was supposed to scar to help it beat right.

This time, we weren’t too hopeful, we had gotten our hopes up too many times before. I was having a difficult pregnancy. I went into Pre-term labor at 25 weeks and wasn’t supposed to be under much stress, but I had to take care of Stewart and Hayden.

Keagan was born on March 23, 2010, 4 weeks pre-term. He weighed 7 lbs 5 oz and was 20 inches long. He couldn’t breath when he was born and spent 1 ½ days in the NICU. It was a miracle he got to come home with us just 2 ½ days after he was born.

Stewart was fainting more than ever, so we went back to our doctor that performed the last surgery. He suggested another ablation, but this time Stewart would be awake. He said that it was the LAST thing they could do. We scheduled the surgery.

Stewart hadn’t been able to work for almost a year. We were at risk of losing our health benefits, so we hoped that this final surgery would fix all of our problems.

On June 21, 2010, we had Stewart’s 5th surgery. I got the flu the night before and couldn’t go, but they said that they found a spot that was sending false signals. We truly prayed that this one worked.

Today it is July 14, 2010, and Stewart isn’t any better. We went to Stewart’s doctor yesterday to find out what our options are. He told us that there isn’t anything else that he can do.

He referred us to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

Our insurance is going to end sometime soon. We don’t know when. The Mayo Clinic is Out-Of-Network. We can’t afford to pay for COBRA. And we have to go to Minnesota. This is our last chance to get Stewart better.

We don’t make enough money to send ourselves out there. We are trying to raise $10,000 on this blog and through friends and family to pay for our travel expenses and our hospital bills. If you would like to donate to our cause and help us out, you can do so by clicking on the paypal "Donate" button on the right hand side of our screen.

Normally this isn’t something that we would do. We don’t like to ask for help. We would prefer to help everyone else. But this isn’t something that we can do by ourselves. If you can help us, we would be so grateful!

In lieu of monetary donations, we would like to hold an auction here on this blog of items donated by you! If you have an item that you would like to donate, please e-mail me at cieranm2 (at) yahoo (dot) com.

Thank you so much!