She and her husband, Zach Beavers, spoke with numerous hospitals, but none would take them. Most places were either not willing or not equipped to handle the heart defect that had been detected in their unborn daughter.

While still in the womb, Anna Claire was diagnosed with a rare heart condition in which the left side of the heart is too small to pump blood. To make things more complicated, she also had a genetic condition that stilted her growth. Two months before Anna Claire’s due date in April, the Beavers’ found out their home hospital in Georgia was not willing to operate on her due to the high risks.

With less than a month to go, the Beavers found a ray of hope when their doctor heard about a hospital in Texas that had unusually positive results treating Anna Claire’s condition. There seemed to be one place that would help them: Cook Children’s Medical Center – Fort Worth. 

One of the first things Cardiologist Kevin Wilkes, M.D. learned about Cook Children’s was that the hospital doesn’t shy away from taking care of the most medically complex children. As a pediatric and fetal cardiologist, Wilkes also quickly learned—and is part of the reason—that Cook Children’s excels at treating those children.

In 2024, Dr. Wilkes noticed one area in particular where Cook Children’s seemed to achieve better patient outcomes than other hospitals: a rare but life-threatening combination of Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS) and Turner Syndrome. In HLHS, the left side of the heart does not develop properly and cannot pump blood to the body. In Turner Syndrome, the X chromosome is missing or partially missing. In very rare cases, babies -- like Anna Claire -- can have both.

Through the Pediatric Research Program, a partnership between UNT Health Fort Worth and Cook Children’s, third-year medical student Anisha Saripalli started to look into the numbers. Over the summer of 2024, she, along with Research Scientists Chris Tsao and Fadeke Ogunyankin, dug through electronic case records in Cook Children’s basement. The results were compelling.

Compared to other hospitals, Cook Children’s outcomes for babies with Turner Syndrome and HLHS are some of the best in the nation, far exceeding the mortality rate of other centers. On average, between 80 and 90% of babies with both conditions die across the country after their first surgery. In fact, the prognosis at many hospitals is so poor for those patients that many places won’t even attempt to perform surgery on a baby with both conditions. However, at Cook Children’s, 100% of babies survived their first surgery.

“That's pretty solid to recommend that these patients go through the surgery, because we're increasing their chance of having a good life. And we're not just saying, ‘oh, well, you're incurable, untreatable,’” Saripalli said.

In short, Cook Children’s gives these babies a chance.

And hundreds of miles away, one family was asking for just that.

In February 2025, the same month that Saripalli’s research was presented at a cardiology conference, the Beavers found out that Anna Claire had both HLHS and Turner Syndrome.

Their birth plans suddenly vanished; the Atlanta hospital where Sarah Ellen planned to deliver said it did not have the ability to treat Anna Claire’s condition.

Because the left side of Anna Claire’s heart could not pump blood, the right side of her heart would need to become the pumping chamber for the rest of the body. But few hospitals are able or willing to perform the surgery on babies with Turner Syndrome due to the added complications.

Anna Claire would need three heart surgeries, the first of which -- called the Norwood surgery – would have to be done within three days of her birth. The Beavers contacted several major heart centers, but they all said they could not take Anna Claire.

“We were just hoping someone would say yes. Because statistics really were not super favorable, and so we were really prepared for the worst,” Sarah Ellen said. “But we were just hoping for a chance.”

At the end of February, Dr. Wilkes presented Saripalli’s research at a Cardiology Conference in Florida. She and the research team found that between 2013 and 2024, Cook Children’s saw six babies with HLHS and Turner Syndrome. In contrast to the high mortality at other hospitals, at Cook Children’s, five of the babies (83%) are alive. 

Coincidentally, the Beavers’ cardiologist happened to attend the presentation. He immediately thought of his patients back in Georgia.

“On Friday afternoon, our home cardiologist called us and was like, ‘hey, there's someone with really good statistics,” Sarah Ellen said. “And that probably got us through the weekend, because we already had gotten two ‘nos’ from hospitals. And we were like, ‘What are we gonna do?’ We don't have time.”

That Monday, the Beavers scheduled a phone call with Dr. Wilkes and Vincent Tam, M.D., the Medical Director of Cook Children's Cardiothoracic Surgery. Dr. Tam walked them through the procedures he would perform on Anna Claire. While other hospitals would not consider taking on Anna Claire’s condition, Dr. Tam seemed undaunted.

“(Tam) never balked at any of it,” Zach said. “He never thought that it was a challenge or any concern, and just made it seem like he's just gonna do the same thing that he always does, and it was gonna be great.”

The Beavers packed the biggest suitcases they had and, leaving behind their home hospital and friends and family, headed to Texas.

On March 25, the Beavers stepped into Cook Children’s for the first time.

“We walked the halls receiving a quick tour and then we had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Tam, Anna Claire’s surgeon,” Sarah Ellen wrote that day on the family’s CaringBridge blog, which provided updates on Anna Claire. “After over an hour with him, we were more at peace believing that the Lord intended for us to be here all along.”

Leading up to Anna Claire’s birth -- and her open-heart surgery – Dr. Tam, Dr. Wilkes and other Cook Children’s staff did everything they could to make the Beavers comfortable and confident. Dr. Tam explained the surgery to them again and it was clear to the Beavers that he had studied and perfected the procedure.

But there was still a risk. Saripalli said there is not much research on babies with both HLHS and Turner Syndrome because the condition is so rare.

But Dr. Tam and Dr. Wilkes were confident. Cook Children’s has such good outcomes, they said, because of the infrastructure and support built into every layer of the medical center.

“I've been here at Cook Children’s for more than 20 years, and we have gradually built a team to the point where we really have excellent people working in all of the teams involved,” Dr. Tam said. “Including nursing staff, respiratory therapy, the technicians that do the ultrasound for the Echo, all of our cardiologists, the ICU doctors, the anesthesiologist doctors, the nurses that help with anesthesia. And my whole operating room team. I mean it's a huge team effort.”

On April 3, that medical team assembled to welcome Anna Claire to the world.

Anna Claire was born right on time, at 4:56 a.m. on her due date at a nearby hospital before being transferred to Cook Children’s and Dr. Tam knew he had to move quickly so that the right side of her heart didn’t overwork itself. The next day, Anna Claire had her first open-heart surgery.

The group effort paid off; Anna Claire’s first surgery was a success. The team successfully began the process of reworking the right ventricle to support the rest of her circulation.

The following week brought another scary moment when blood and fluid started to build up around Anna Claire’s tiny heart and the medical team determined they needed to open her back up. Fortunately, Dr. Tam and the team found the source of the bleeding and stopped it immediately.

The next weeks brought other challenges and still more members onto Anna Claire’s medical team. Her feeding, oxygen levels, sleep patterns and every internal system were constantly monitored. The next five weeks, Zach said, felt like months.

“Yeah, there were days it was just… you kind of went to bed like, ‘man, this was a lot,’ and you woke up knowing ‘we're doing it again today,’” Sarah Ellen said.

But they also found support at Cook Children’s.

“In these days, this place has held us,” Sarah Ellen wrote at the time on her blog. “Strangers have become best friends and family. Nurses and doctors have become dear friends. Staff members have learned our family’s story. The doors we walked in on March 25 have become a place we will forever call home.”

Anna Claire was able to temporarily leave the hospital on May 30 and stay at the Beavers’ temporary home that a local DFW family offered them. On July 24, she had her second open- heart surgery. While anxiety-inducing for the Beavers, the surgery went well, and Anna Claire made the monumental milestone of moving from the ICU to the less intensive Cardiac Step Down Unit.

Exactly five months after the Beavers arrived -- unsure of how long they would be away from home and uncertain about their daughter’s future -- the family of three left Fort Worth to head back home to Georgia.

Leaving was emotional for many reasons. They were excited to return to their home, family and, most importantly, their Georgia Bulldogs (Anna Claire had a jersey waiting for her at home). But they had to say goodbye to the dozens of people at Cook Children’s who made one of the most challenging times of their lives into something bearable. On Aug. 8, they visited the Cardiology Unit with Anna Claire, who wore a jumper adorned with blue flowers and a white bow. The staff excitedly gathered around her, commenting on how strong she looked and how well she drank from her bottle.

Two of Anna Claire’s nurses with the Home Monitoring Unit, Emma Hughes and Mariah Trammel, marveled at how she had exceeded everyone’s expectations.

“Just in general, having her heart diagnosis is really challenging and she has a genetic component on top of that, which adds to the complexity,” Mariah Trammel, Heart Center Discharge Coordinator, Cardiology-Administration, said. “So we were one of the only institutions that were willing to take her on and do her surgery. And she has done incredibly well.”

Before leaving Fort Worth, they also met Saripalli for the first time. For Saripalli, meeting the family brought home the fact that her research, and the decades of work it's based on, has real, life-saving implications. Saripalli’s project highlighted how Cook Children’s has created a collaboration between research and clinical medicine that leads to immediate impact. Medical research can take years to trickle down to actual patients. Cook Children’s partnerships with universities like UNT Health Fort Worth means solutions can be rapidly translated to real results.

Saripalli, Dr. Tam and Dr. Wilkes hope the Beavers’ story and Saripalli’s research provide a similar ray of hope for others.

“This research at Cook Children's was a game changer,” Dr. Wilkes said. “And I think you see that in how quickly it affected the family. By getting that information out there nationally at a conference within a week, we were able to change the outcome of a family. I hope in the future we can change the outcome of many more families undergoing this type of heart surgery.”

Anna Claire is now seven months old and continues to thrive in Georgia.

When Patti Wilson was pregnant with her daughter Melanie in 1980, health care and technology looked a whole lot different than it does today.

Routine sonograms did not exist and there was no way for expectant mothers to know whether anything was wrong with their baby until the child was born. Up until labor, Patti’s pregnancy had been text book and no one had any reason to suspect anything was wrong with Melanie.

However, on June 3, 1980, when Patti went into labor, everything changed.

Doctors began noticing Melanie’s heart would stop every time Patti had a contraction. They originally thought the umbilical cord was wrapped around Melanie’s neck, but after an emergency C-section was performed, Patti and her husband learned their newborn baby girl was facing a life-threatening diagnosis.

The day after Melanie was born; she was transferred to Cook Children’s, which was called Fort Worth Children’s at the time. The prognosis Melanie’s parents received was bleak.

At 5 days old, Melanie had her first heart catheterization. This first procedure allowed doctors to diagnose Melanie with a combination of congenital heart defects that included transposition of the great arteries, ventricular septal defect and pulmonary stenosis. She would need multiple procedures to fix the structural abnormalities in her heart but the catheterization temporarily fixed the problem to postpone surgery as long as possible.

Melanie was a year old when she had her first open heart surgery at Cook Children’s. The procedure was called the Rastelli procedure and the surgeon performing the surgery had practiced under Giancarlo Rastelli himself before coming to Cook Children’s. Throughout her life, Melanie had additional surgeries at 3, 10, 16 and 27 years old. She also underwent multiple heart catheterizations and procedures.

Over the years, Cook Children’s has become a home away from home and Cook Children’s cardiologist Richard Readinger,, M.D, , who has followed Melanie since she was 8 years old, feels more like a family member a doctor.

When asked about how her diagnosis affected her life as a child, Melanie said it was all she ever knew. She learned about her diagnosis as a child learns most things – by experiencing it as time goes on. At age 11, James “Hud” Allender, M.D., another Cook Children’s cardiologist, sat her down to explain that her mom may not always be with her if there is an emergency and she must know and understand her own diagnosis. It was at this point that Melanie remembers truly understanding what she had been coping with up until then.

Since her last procedure at age 27, Melanie has had no complications. Even though she’s an adult, she continues to be followed by cardiologists at Cook Children’s who are skilled in treating patients of all ages with congenital heart defects. With the continued advancements in pediatric cardiology, children with congenital heart defects are not only surviving, but growing up to become adults who lead rich, full lives. Cook Children’s Adult Congenital Heart Disease program is one of only a few formal programs nationwide to offer inpatient and outpatient care for patients from the moment they are born all the way into adulthood.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Due to Melanie’s diagnosis, she was told that pregnancy would likely be too risky. Her doctors were unsure if her heart would be strong enough to carry a baby to term.

But, some things are left to fate and Melanie began to have vivid dreams that she was feeding twin girls that she knew had to be her own. She would wake up absolutely bewildered because she knew it wasn’t a possibility. Fast forward a few weeks and Melanie and her husband found out the shocking news that she was pregnant.

Melanie immediately made an appointment with Dr. Readinger where he performed an EKG, echocardiogram and an exam and said, “It’s the strangest thing. Your heart appears to be in the best shape it’s ever been in. If you’re going to have a baby, now is the time.” The sonogram revealed that Melanie was actually pregnant with twins as her dreams suggested. Unfortunately the one baby’s heart never fully formed and at 8 weeks another sonogram revealed that the baby had been absorbed.

Having wanted to create a girl name from two men’s names, Melanie and her husband already had a plan when they found out 15 weeks into the pregnancy that they would have a baby girl. Rossleigh is named after her great grandfather, Ross, and her grandfather, David Lee.

Melanie’s pregnancy went smoothly physically, but it was incredibly draining emotionally. At the beginning, Melanie and her husband felt as if they were only receiving disheartening news. At week 18, the couple was informed that there was an issue with Rossleigh’s heart and the perinatologist could only see one kidney. Luckily, her second kidney would be detected on a later sonogram.

At week 22, a fetal echo was performed at Cook Children’s where cardiologists could diagnose Rossleigh’s heart defect while she was still inside Melanie. Fetal echocardiography didn’t exist when Melanie was born. A fetal echo allows doctors to see a baby’s heart while it’s still in the womb. Doctors can make the diagnosis and work with the surgical team to come up with a treatment plan even before birth. This technology gives the gift of time, both for the surgical team and for the family.

When the fetal echo was performed, Rossleigh was originally diagnosed with Truncus Arteriosus with a ventricular septal defect but at birth, that diagnosis would change.

Rossleigh Claire Dewey was born on Sept. 26, 2012 and was immediately transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Cook Children’s. An echocardiogram would show that her diagnosis was actually Tetralogy of Fallot and pulmonary atresia. Only five days after birth, Vincent Tam, M.D., Cook Children’s medical director of Cardiothoracic Surgery, operated on Rossleigh’s heart. She stayed in the hospital for 29 days, ironically, in the exact same surgery recovery room that Melanie had stayed in after her most recent surgery, and has had no procedures since. She could end up needing another procedure in her teenage years but right now, she is living life like any other 5 year old.

The bond between a mother and daughter is always special and unique, but Melanie and Rossleigh’s bond is even more unique because of their shared experiences.

These days, because both Melanie and Rossleigh are still being followed by Dr. Readinger, they have annual mother-daughter cardiology appointments. Melanie said that while one is getting their echo, the other will hang out in the waiting room and vice versa. A unique mother-daughter experience that most don’t have to share but they make the best out of a tough situation.

The Dewey family is forever grateful to Dr. Readinger and the care and compassion that he has shown both Melanie and Rossleigh throughout their medical journey. Melanie bragged on his ability to appropriately explain and literally sketch out the most complicated situations to both generations of heart patients.

Even though nearing retirement age, Dr. Readinger wanted to be the one to treat Rossleigh so that he could be involved in both of their care. He has made a great impact on their lives and the family is forever thankful.

As Melanie reflected back on everything she’s been through, she explained, “I have such a unique viewpoint going into this situation. I’ve been on both sides, as a patient who was scared to go into their own heart surgery, as well as the mom of a child with heart issues. Both are frightening in their own ways but I was able to gain the courage to push through these circumstances because of my faith and an amazing team of skilled doctors in nurses.”

As we look back over Cook Children’s 100 year history, Melanie’s story is proof of not only how many medical advancements have been made but how things are literally changing each and every day. If Melanie was born 10 years earlier, the Rastelli procedure wouldn’t have existed and she would have died as an infant. However, if she was born 10 years later, she would have been able to undergo a newer procedure, at the time, called the Nikaidoh procedure where they could easily switch the two sides of the heart. It’s likely she would have needed just the one surgery rather than five. Plus, she would have had the added benefit of the experience of Dr. Tam and Hisashi Nikaidoh, M.D, who created the procedure, and have the largest combined experience of aortic translocations in North America.

These advancements are even more apparent with Rossleigh’s journey thus far.

All of these medical advancements are not taken for granted at Cook Children’s and we know that we could not have made these strides without your help. Our generous donors and supportive community allow us to help Melanie and Rossleigh to live their lives to the fullest, despite their complications. As you join in our celebration of 100 years, remember who we are really celebrating – patients like Melanie and Rossleigh, and also, you. Thank you for being the 1 in our 100.

Celebrating Cook Children's Centennial

Cook Children's is turning 100 and will be celebrating all year! Don't miss out on the fun throughout 2018. Enjoy unique stories, parades, special guests, and community events across Fort Worth. We hope that you can share in some our celebrations because you're the 1 in our 100!

Celebrate with us