Holly BaltzLake Worth Beach infant with rare heart condition formally approved for transplant.
Mabel Rose Correal, a 2-month-old infant from Lake Worth Beach born with a rare heart condition, can breathe on her own for the first time since the day she was born.
“Our little fighter has gotten her breathing tube removed!” Her mother, Hanna, announced on Facebook Feb. 15. “Big step for our little girl.”
Doctors at UF Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville removed Mabel Rose’s respirator after they implanted a device on Feb. 3 that helps her heart pump oxygenated blood. She now gets extra oxygen through her nose.
At last, Mabel Rose is on the verge of some “normal baby things” that had eluded her for the first two months of her life, Hanna said, while she awaits a heart transplant, for which the Correals received formal approval on Feb. 18.
After picking her up only five times in her first six weeks, Hanna and Mabel Rose’s father, Mateo, can now change her diapers and soon will be able to hold their baby without assistance, “as medical lines and breathing support are weaned away,” Hanna told Stet News.
“Mateo and I do happy, positive touch on her face and cheeks, and rub my breastmilk on her lips. She is also getting better with suckling her pacifier!” said Hanna, 24.
Interim help until transplant is possible
Within hours of her birth on Dec. 13 in Royal Palm Beach, Mabel Rose was rushed to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. Doctors there found a complex case.
The baby was missing the lower left ventricle of her heart. She also has a leaky valve. They repaired a hole in her diaphragm, which had allowed her kidney to sit on her lung, restricting her breathing.
Children born with the ventricle problem typically can be treated with three open-heart surgeries over the first three or four years of their lives. But Mabel Rose wasn’t eligible because of the leaky valve so a transplant is her only option.
Treated by expert pediatric cardiac surgeon
Hanna and Mabel Rose traveled to Gainesville Jan. 24 in a private plane sent by Shands, Hanna said, to be treated by Dr. Mark Bleiweis, a pediatric cardiac surgeon who specializes in treating Mabel Rose’s main heart condition, known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Mateo soon joined them with the car.
In open heart surgery, Bleiweis implanted a Berlin Heart, a pump meant to keep children healthy until a transplant organ is available, typically in six to nine months.
Bleiweis and his team were the first in Florida to install a Berlin Heart in 2006, even before the Food and Drug Administration approved it in 2011 for humanitarian use in critically ill patients. The device was allowed for compassionate use in a 9-year-old boy who eventually received a transplant. Alexzander Wood of Orange Park went home about four months later.
The Berlin Heart is considered a life-saving step for children with severe heart failure, a Berlin Heart news release said. It is worn chiefly outside of the body but is attached to the child’s heart and is known as a ventricular assist device.
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine gave children with such devices a higher chance of survival because it could keep them healthier before a transplant. That wait can be longer because fewer donor hearts are available for ones so young.
Help from a Palm Beach Gardens foundation
Hanna and Mateo lived in Mabel Rose’s hospital room at Nicklaus Children’s for about six weeks. Now they can sleep a little better in an apartment they rented in Gainesville that’s only eight minutes from the hospital. Mateo, an air-conditioning technician, plans to get a job in the area where, with the wait for the transplant and subsequent monitoring, they could be living for more than three years.
It’s been tough on them already.
“I’ve spent my life dreaming of nothing more than being a mom,” Hanna said in a video story on Instagram. She said she researched all the best supplements and prepared her mind and body for labor.
But “I never expected to be a medical mom, to learn how to read breathing ventilator settings. To stare at vitals and feel powerless watching doctors and nurses care for my daughter. To sit at a desk with a heart transplant team and hear outcomes, statistics & handed a box of tissues.”
The Kemp family of Palm Beach Gardens knows a lot about what Hanna and Mateo are going through. And they are ready to help.
John Kemp Jr. grew up with chronic medical conditions that sent the family to children’s hospitals all over the country throughout his childhood.
“People can’t understand how broken your heart is,” his mother, Jen, told Stet News, “especially a trying medical time with a child.”
Beginning at age 4, John Jr. experienced severe leg and back pain along with excruciating headaches. He eventually was diagnosed with a rare vascular malformation and multiple autoimmune problems. The family was forced to move to Baltimore so John Jr. could receive the care he needed at Johns Hopkins.
Now 21, he’s a senior pre-med student at Palm Beach Atlantic University, studying biology in hopes of becoming an orthopedic surgeon.
He and his mother started the Kemp Legacy Foundation last year to help families coping with rare, chronic medical issues on some of the toughest challenges that come along with it: logistics such as travel, lodging, food and lost income as well as support during critical moments.
“The hospital stays, medical travel, uncertainty, and financial strain shaped our lives in ways that ultimately led us to create The Kemp Legacy Foundation,” Jen Kemp said. “What began as our personal journey has now become our mission: to help families navigating complex medical crises feel supported, resourced, and not alone.”
Mabel Rose’s family will receive one of the first large donations that the foundation has given.
“When we read Mabel Rose’s story (in Stet News), it resonated with us immediately,” said Jen, whose husband, John Sr., is a paramedic with Palm Beach County Fire Rescue and a Palm Beach Gardens City Council member. “We recognized the long road ahead — the transplant wait, the relocation, the emotional and financial weight — because we have walked a similar path ourselves. Although we are a newly established foundation, our board felt strongly that we needed to reach out and offer support.”
How you can help
Donors can earmark money for Mabel Rose and family when they give to The Kemp Legacy Foundation. Jen pointed out that 100% will go to the Correals without the 3% fee charged by GoFundMe.
If you can’t donate money, Jen said, “please share the reason this family does need help” with friends, families and social media.
In the meantime, Hanna said she feels hopeful — and grateful.
“We are so empowered by the outpouring of prayer and support of our community, and struggle to put into words our deep thanks,” Hanna said on the baby’s GoFundMe page. “She truly is so special and sassy and incredibly strong.”
Holly Baltz is an editor and a reporter at Stet News. Her 40-year career of award-winning journalism included 34 at The Palm Beach Post. Holly lives with her husband in Lake Worth Beach.
