Feel Good Friday: Meet Magnolia and heart condition that changed her first days of life

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WNKY) – Meet Magnolia Ford-Conway.

She is three years old. She loves Play-Doh, stickers and dance class. She proudly shows off the faint line down her chest and calls it her “battle scar.”

“That was my battle scar,” Magnolia said.

What she doesn’t remember is that before she ever learned to talk, doctors were racing to save her life.

Just hours after Magnolia was born in Bowling Green, her mother, Mekinsey Ford-Conway, noticed something unusual.

“Her lips started turning blue,” she said.

Within minutes, nurses took Magnolia for testing. About 20 minutes later, they returned with an answer the family had never heard before: transposition of the great arteries, or TGA.

“They came back and told us… that she had that diagnosis and that Norton Children’s Hospital was on their way… the helicopter to come get her,” Ford-Conway said. “And that I wasn’t going to be able to go with her and that she was going to have to have surgery.”

“You can’t just take her away. This is my new baby. You can’t just take her away like that.”

TGA is a congenital heart defect in which the two main arteries leaving the heart are reversed.

“Essentially there’s two big loops that are not mixing,” said Dr. Huma Rasheed, a pediatric cardiologist with Norton Children’s Outpatient Center in Bowling Green. “Bottom line is you’re not getting enough oxygenated blood out to the body… and it is something that requires urgent attention and medical intervention.”

Because oxygen-rich blood cannot properly circulate, babies with TGA often appear blue or dusky and require surgery within the first week of life.

Magnolia was airlifted to Louisville and underwent open-heart surgery at three days old.

“I just remember being just very numb the entire day,” her mother said. “I would hang up and then basically just sit there and wait for the next phone call.”

Two weeks later, a second surgery.

“I don’t think we really ever felt a final relief,” Ford-Conway said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt a final relief.”

After nearly a month in the hospital, Magnolia was finally discharged.

“I would say that really the relief didn’t happen until finally getting her in the car and taking her away from the hospital,” her mother said.

Today, Magnolia returns to Norton Children’s for routine follow-up visits, but her life looks much like that of any other preschooler.

“With a successful repair… they overall pretty much have a healthy, normal life,” Rasheed said.

Advances in prenatal screening, congenital heart disease detection and pediatric heart surgery have significantly improved outcomes for children born with conditions like TGA, she said.

For Ford-Conway, sharing Magnolia’s story during Heart Month is about awareness.

“I think that even though things get pretty low sometimes that they will get better,” she said. “And to just hold out, just try to stay as positive as you can.”

Three years ago, Magnolia’s heart needed urgent repair.

Today, it beats steadily, a reminder of how far pediatric heart care has come, and how strong even the smallest patients can be.