Sam was born October 6th 2003 and seemed perfectly healthy though he had a slight heart murmur. The doctors kept checking it and at 1 week of age, the murmur was still there so we were sent to Children's Hospital in Seattle for an echo.

They discovered that he had an enlarged heart and didn't know why. They admitted him for observation and the next day we went for a CT scan to rule out VGM but wound up ruling it in.

On his 9th day of life, he was embolized and had 6 of his 8 feeder veins embolized. The other two were too small to embolize at the time. He spent 10 days in the ICU and was discharged to go home and get bigger and stronger so that if someday he needed to have the other two embolized, he could.

Well, Sam's held up his end of the bargain. He's now 9m old and about 30" tall and 24 pounds. Dainty he is not, but he's happy and thriving and growing and developing normally. He's had follow up CT scans and no new feeders have been found to date (knock on wood). Sam continues to amaze us and his doctors with his progress. His favorite thing in the world is his big sister Abby. His first word was Abba, meaning her, not the disco group. :)

We keep praying and hoping that Sam will continue to thrive and grow into the happy success story he's capable of being!

Sam is proof that VGM stories can have happy endings. Our hearts break for all the families touched by this monster and feel so fortunate to have Sam in our lives. We've relied on this site so many times, it would be impossible to count them all. There are some truly great people here!

THANK YOU!

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