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A toddler from South Carolina is recovering after having surgery to remove a rare tumor in his heart that was described as “literally one in a million.”
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The parents of 21-month-old Rhody Tabor said the tumor, which began in his liver, moved through his blood vessels and into the right side of his heart, is now gone.
“He’s a miracle. We almost lost him,” mother Anna Tabor told NBC affiliate WYFF.
“He crashed several times and his blood pressure was 28/20 at one point.”
Cardiac and abdominal teams performed the surgery, which took more than eight hours, at the Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital in Charleston on Wednesday.
While tumor-free, the family said Rhody has a long road ahead of him as he will still need additional treatment including more rounds of chemotherapy.
Back in January, Rhody’s parents took him to see a cardiologist. Doctors instructed the family to get down to Charleston, 350 kilometres from their home in Easley.
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By the time they got to the hospital, Rhody was not doing well.
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“So sick and so afraid,” Tabor said. “He only said between like three or four different words and was just scared of everyone and he would only say, ‘help me’ and ‘all done.’ He stopped walking.”
The family is living in hotels and eating takeout while also driving back and forth between the hospital and their home since Rhody began receiving treatment earlier this year.
To offset the travel, lodging and food costs on the family, an online fundraiser was created by the boy’s uncle.
“As you can imagine, this difficult journey has been and will continue to be very costly,” Edwin Wike wrote on the GoFundMe appeal. “Please consider helping this beautiful family financially recover while their baby boy physically recovers.”
The family has raised nearly half of their $75,000 goal.
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