Charity Helps Family While Baby In Long-term Care For Rare Heart Disease

In the first year of Everly Backe’s life, she had three open-heart surgeries, the first one at only 3 days old, followed by another at four months and her most recent at 11 months. The lives of her parents, Lauren and Matt Backe, and older brother, Jack, then 5, were altered as the constant care and hospitalization of Everly, born with a rare heart defect, took center stage. The Crystal Lake family found themselves driving sometimes more than two hours one way to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where they found the best heart surgeon they could to care for their new daughter. The drives were tiresome, and Lauren found herself making the long trek on her own with her baby girl as Matt tried to lead a normal life back home with Jack. The surgeries required long hospital stays, but the events were softened some, Lauren Backe said, because they were provided with a room at the Ronald McDonald House just across the street. “Staying at the Ronald McDonald House means that when Everly is doing bad I can be there in two minutes, not two hours,” she said. The charity operates houses throughout Northwest Indiana and Illinois.