Rory Feek is recalling a scary experience. In a new blog post, the singer revealed that his 12-year-old daughter, Indiana, was airlifted to the hospital two weeks after she underwent open heart surgery.
In his post, Feek noted that his daughter’s most recent health woes began with a headache, a cough, and vomiting. Eventually, Indiana passed out Feek and his wife, Rebecca, decided to call 911.
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“I’m not going to go into the moment-by-moment details that led to us to calling 911 – both us holding her in our arms, literally crying, begging for help – but let’s just say that neither Rebecca, nor I, have been as scared in our lives as we were Thursday morning,” Feek wrote. “I can hardly think it, let alone write it… but we thought we had lost her.”
The family set off for a hospital in Waco, Texas, via ambulance. After Indiana was examined by an ER doctor, though, they decided to airlift her to a hospital in Austin.
When they arrived at the next hospital, doctors explained that the area around Indiana’s heart “had filled up with fluid and it was constricting her heart’s ability to beat properly.” As such, doctors had to take Indiana into surgery to drain the fluid.
“They said that it wasn’t anything that we did, or didn’t do,” Fleek wrote. “This was something that sometimes happens, where the inflammation from the surgery starts creating an excess of fluid, which is what would make her heart have difficulty pumping and her lose color and struggle to get oxygen, and her body to react with vomiting as it’s trying to counter the problem.”
Rory Feek’s Daughter Expected to Make a Full Recovery
Two hours later, Indiana was out of surgery.
Doctors later told Feek that they had drained 610 ccs of fluid during surgery. That fluid, doctors said, had caused Indiana’s “heart area to swell to twice the size it was supposed to be.” In doing so, it made it feel as if “an elephant was sitting on her chest.”
Her heart rate improved immediately, with her appetite returning hours later, and her color coming back the next day.
“The doctors say that Indy is doing great and should make a full recovery, and hopefully have no further problems like this in the future,” Feek wrote. “And so, the color has returned, not just to Indy’s face, but to her Mama and Papa’s too.”
“Maybe things like this are what it takes for God to get the undivided attention of His people. To get us to truly wake up and see what a gift the life He’s given each of us truly is,” he added. “And so I’d say, Indy and our family aren’t just okay today, we’re more alive than ever. More grateful than ever been before.”
Photo by Mindy Small/FilmMagic