Family in Cold Lake raises money for boy who awaits a new heart

The Frenette family in Fort McMurray has a fundraiser started by family in Cold Lake and they need your support Lakeland.

Beautiful Finley was born on July 11 with a diagnosis of Pulmonary Atresia. A fundraiser on behalf of Caitlyn Frenette and family has been started by her Aunt Mireille Greengrass who lives in Cold Lake to help alleviate the financial stress the family has been placed under while Finley fights to stay alive.

“We knew that Finley had a fight on his hands and were aware that he would have surgery,” Greengrass said. “But unfortunately, things did not go as smooth as planned and Finley has a much longer and tougher fight on his wee little hands.”

Greengrass says Finley will be put on the transplant list while he awaits a new heart.

“Please consider donating to Finley’s parents, Caitlyn and Justin to help alleviate the stressors from bills and let’s give them some piece of mind while they spend their time with their little warrior,” Greengrass said.

Greengrass says, “Finley has faced some big setbacks. He had some issues with blood pressure and infection and ended up back on his oxygenator and PRISMA.”

“Since then, a lot has happened,” Greengrass said. “Finley is back off the oxygenator in his circuit and his left lung is looking better, still not great, but better.  We started using his PD catheter again, and the goal over the next few days is to hopefully work it up to full capacity. His sternal incision is healing, and all his incision or wound sites are looking better each day.”

The staff t the hospital recently removed his PICC line from his scalp Greengrass says as they have added a central line in his groin and no longer needed the PICC.

“This makes mom a happy camper cause little dude can finally wear his hats,” Greengrass said.

Finley’s fight for life this has a long ways to go but the family refuses to give up hope/

“Finley’s biggest hurdle right now is his left chest tube,” Greengrass said. “In the last few days it has started putting out more and more, and they have determined he has chylotorax, which is essentially a leak from his lymphatic system.”

Greengrass says the doctor thought there might be an increase in the leak because the blood flows to his lungs and body were out of balance.

“Finley had another heart cath procedure to determine for certain if that was the case,” Greengrass said. “The flow ratio IS off, but not to an extent that it should cause that much of a leak.”

Greengrass says because the issue has just begun, they are going to give him a couple weeks to see if it resolves itself, as it sometimes can.

“If it doesn’t, they will look into further imaging to see if they can determine the location of the leak and seal it off,” Greengrass said. “The easiest way to do that would be an MRI, but that is unfortunately not an option for Finley, seeing as his metal machines and the MRI magnets would not get along so they will have to do alternate imaging.”

Ultimately, if the chylotorax cannot be resolved, Finley will not be a candidate for a heart transplant.

“The odds are stacked against him, they have been from the beginning. But his situation is not without hope. The entire medical team is still forging forward and doing everything they can to bridge him to transplant,” Greengrass said. “So yet again, we wait, and we hope that our little Warrior can continue to defy the odds.”

Please Lakeland lets pull together to help this family financially. If you would like to support #FinleysFight you can do so by donating here.

If you would like to leave a message of support for the family you can do so at #PrayForFinley.

Help Fin win his fight.

Arthur@lakelandconnect.thedev.ca