Patient Stories

Our daughter, Christy, was 16 years old when Dr. Tajchman discovered she had an aortic aneurysm and bicuspid valve. Christy had been on swim team since she was 6 and was logging 20 hours a week of intense training in the pool when everything changed. I grew up with a...

Peyton to most, PJ to those she has given permission.  She is a vibrant, energetic twelve-year-old, who to look at her today, you would never know she had a heart problem.  In fact, we did not know she had any health issues until July 9, 2019.  She was...

Our daughter, Annalina, was born with tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart condition that affects about 5% of all children born with heart defects in the United States. She had two surgeries by the time she was 10 months old.  Even with the many ups and downs of...

We found out about Jack’s rare heart defect (Holmes heart, single ventricle) during a prenatal screening ultrasound when I was 17 weeks pregnant. I can remember in vivid detail that moment over 20 years ago, the technician diligently searching for the missing...

After an uneventful pregnancy and planned c-section birth at our local Central Oregon hospital, Levi made his way into the world, seemingly healthy and perfect in every way. His first day of life was spent surrounded by his parents, two excited big brothers, and other...

This is Sophia - we often call her Sophie-Bear or Soph-Soph. She is 6 years old. She has Complete Heart Block and received a Pacemaker in March of 2021.  Sophia from birth to 5 had no major health conditions, her heart block is not congenital (she wasn’t born with it)...

I worried about a lot of potential complications and problems during my first two pregnancies, but heart defects were never really on my radar.  As far as I knew, our family had no prior history of heart complications and I had very limited awareness of the...