TAMPA, FL -- Little Lionsford Reyes may never remember his trip to a foreign country or his time in the hospital, but without doctors at St. Joseph's Hospital he likely won't survive at all.
Four-month-old Lionsford made the trip from Belize to Tampa with his mom last week. Since then, a battery of tests have confirmed what doctors feared. Lionsford has a complex condition of heart defects known as tetralogy of Fallot. The defect means Lionsford has a large hole in his heart that allows oxygen-poor blood to pass through his heart and the rest of his body without picking up oxygen from the lungs. The lack of oxygen is clear from the outside, often causing his lips and fingernails to turn blue and sometimes even purple.
Today, practitioners working under the "Gift of Hope" will perform open-heart surgery on the tiny infant.
St. Joseph's Children's Hospital became the first Florida hospital to participate in the "Gift of Life" program in 1996. Since then, more than 120 children from countries such as Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, Cuba and Uganda have come to St. Joseph's Children's Hospital for life-saving surgery.
A portion of today's surgery is also being paid for by the Tampa Downtown Rotary Club.
