PORTLAND, Texas — From the outside, 8-year-old Hero Rodriguez looks like any other kid. However, Hero was born with a heart defect, and his family is calling on the community for help in getting him a life-changing surgery.
Ebstein anomaly is a rare heart condition where the valve that separates the top and bottom right heart chambers does not form correctly.
Hero's surgery, at the hands of a specialized surgeon in Minnesota, would "save his valve, flip it, reconstruct it," according to his mother, MaryAnn. "It's going to be an 8-plus-hour procedure, and at the same time they're going to go in there they need to burn pathways because he has the extra beats you can do that, as well hospital stays." On Sunday, the Rodriguez family will host a barbecue fundraiser at Gregory-Portland Nutrition from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The family's current goal is $150,000 to cover the medical and travel expenses, but they will continue raising funds however long it takes to reach their grand total.
"Thinking back, you think of all the hard times that as parents you see your kid, and you don't know if he's going to be 8 years old, if he's going to be 10, if he's going to be an adult," MaryAnn said tearfully. "We try to give him as much normalcy aside from the homeschooling; we did that to protect, and then COVID hit, so we're like, 'OK, we're not going to expose him to the extra germs to risk one infection, one hospitalization' because we don't know how his heart will take it. So it's always been like we're creating this bubble protecting him."
Despite the medical hurdles, Hero is surrounded by his loving family and enjoys activities like playing with Lego, going outside, playing basketball and making YouTube videos with his siblings on their channel, TinyButToughTV.
Even if people cannot provide monetary support, MaryAnn hopes that her son's story can help educate people about heart defects and other similar conditions that aren't seen. "Looking at Hero, you wouldn't think that there's anything wrong with him," she continued. "To just be kind to people who, you don't know what they're going through, just be kind to everyone and anyone."
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