21 Jan The Schendel Family

Noah Schendel was born June 7, 2024 at Children’s Mercy downtown. His mother, Kate, started care at the Children’s Mercy Fetal Health Center that February after they discovered at his 20-week ultrasound that he has hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS). After echocardiograms every four weeks, they were prepared as they could be for what was going to happen after Noah was born.

Noah had his first surgery at 4 days old, and he was in the cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) for the majority of his stay at Children’s Mercy. Kate and Ryan, Noah’s parents, live in Overland Park and were to visit the newly-renovated Ronald McDonald House inside the hospital as often as they needed while Noah was in good hands in the CICU. 

Kate said, “It was just so amazing. A lot of nights we were at Children’s until 10 or 11 o’clock at night before we went home to sleep, and we were able to go in and have a meal that other people had cooked or grab a snack, protein shake … whatever we needed. It was just amazing to have it as a resource.”

Kate and Ryan brought Noah home on August 28, but had to return a couple of months later for his second of the series surgeries that he will have to have throughout his life due to his HLHS. This time, the Schedels were able to stay in the Ronald McDonald House for eight days while Noah had complications from surgery. The scheduled surgery was 8 hours long … but the doctor had to bring him back the next day which was very rare.

“There’s nothing that can prepare you for your 5-month-old baby having back to back open heart surgeries. We had our Ronald McDonald House room that we were able to go back to and have some peace and quiet, be able to lean on each other … we were very emotional because when they had to take him back into the OR the second day that was very unexpected,” Kate said.

Noah did well after his second surgery, and it was smooth sailing from there. He went home on the CHAMP program, a cardiac home monitoring program Children’s Mercy pioneered. He graduated from that program in December 2024, and Kate and Ryan thought it was the perfect time to bring a check from the T-shirt fundraiser they had with friends and family that sold over 200 shirts.

“It was an easy choice to donate to Ronald McDonald House. We felt like that money could go a long way in helping out. To have a bed, a place to go, a place to shower, a place to decompress was just incredible,” said Kate.

After 82 inpatient days in Children’s Mercy, Noah is 7 months old and thriving.