Three-year-old Teagan will put her ear to your chest and say “boom, boom, boom!” It’s the sound she knows doctors hear when they listen to her heart.
Teagan spent the first year of her life at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh due to multiple complex heart issues. She had surgery as a newborn to repair a double aortic arch — a rare congenital heart defect. Teagan was also born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a severe condition where the left side of the heart is underdeveloped. When she was 3 months old, pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon Mario Castro-Medina, MD, replaced her mitral valve with a mechanical heart valve to ensure proper blood flow.
After undergoing many procedures to get her heart as healthy as possible, Teagan went home for her first birthday. In March 2025, she returned for treatment of pulmonary vein stenosis. In this rare condition, the veins that carry blood from the lungs to the heart become narrowed. Jacqueline Kreutzer, MD, a pediatric interventional cardiologist, performed a heart catheterization procedure to open up the veins.
Teagan’s purple Mr. Platypus and her Slothies were at her side for the procedure. In fact, they’ve accompanied her to UPMC Children’s for every procedure and visit.
Teagan still has additional heart procedures ahead of her, but her parents, Brandi and Cody, say, “She’s a fighter, and we’ll always be there as her advocate. We’re immensely proud of her.”