ATLANTA, Georgia — For 307 days, home was a hospital room.
Violet, a 10-month-old girl, spent nearly her entire life inside Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta after being born with a serious heart defect. This week, she finally walked through her own front door.
Born into a fight she did not choose
Violet came into the world with a condition called complete AV canal — a defect that affects the walls and valves of the heart.
At just two weeks old, she went into heart failure.
What followed was months of machines, monitors, and medical procedures that most adults will never face. Her parents, Ansleigh Brumbelow and Parker Blackerby, kept count of every single day.
177 days of waiting for one phone call
Getting a new heart meant first getting on a waiting list — and then hoping.
Her family spent 177 of those 307 days waiting for an organ match. Every day without a call was another day of uncertainty.
When the phone finally rang, the moment was not what her mother had imagined.
“I wanted to be excited,” Brumbelow said. “This was the call we were waiting for, for so long. But all I could think of is she’s going to go under and through a huge operation.”
A surgery that changed everything overnight
Surgeons successfully completed the complex transplant procedure. What happened next stunned even her own parents.
Violet recovered so quickly that she was home within a week and a half of the operation.
Her mother said the change was almost impossible to believe.
“They told me when they get a new heart you won’t believe how much changes,” Brumbelow said. “It really does change overnight — her color and her energy.”
Dr. Josh Rosenblum, a congenital cardiac surgeon at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, said Violet’s future looks bright.
“She will be able to do all things her sister and all other kids her age can do,” he said. “A normal, healthy kid.”
Joy and grief sitting side by side
With all three of their daughters now healthy and home together, the family is celebrating — but not without acknowledging the weight of what made it possible.
Someone else lost a child so Violet could live.
“It takes a life to get to where we are now,” said Violet’s father. “We are grateful right now, but it’s something heavy in my thoughts day to day.”
Her mother echoed that quiet gratitude.
“I couldn’t be more grateful for someone to make such a selfless decision on the hardest day of their life,” she said.
Violet’s bead bracelet tells the whole story — a yellow bead for every night she spent in the hospital, and one special bead for the day she received her new heart.
Have you or someone you love been through an organ transplant journey? Share your story in the comments — it might give someone else the hope they need today.