The day after Christmas is typically meant for enjoying new gifts and eating leftovers. But in 2020, Emersen's day was spent bedridden with what she and her parents believed to be a stomach flu. After two days, she still wasn’t getting better and when she experienced a fainting spell, her parents brought her to Nationwide Children’s Hospital Emergency Department.  

While there, a blood culture revealed Emersen had a bacterial infection known as methicillin-susceptible staphylococcus aureus (MSSA), which affected her heart. The MSSA caused inflammation of her heart valves and chambers, known as bacterial endocarditis, and Emersen needed open heart surgery to repair a damaged mitral valve.  

“We thought that our lives were moving forward after the surgery,” remembers Emersen’s dad, Craig. But an infection required them to return to the hospital. 

Doctors discovered that MSSA had continued to damage Emersen’s heart and she would need another open-heart surgery just two weeks after the first. Two weeks following the second surgery, Emersen received an additional diagnosis of a rare aneurysm in her heart requiring a third and final open-heart surgery.  

Today, after more than six months spent at Nationwide Children’s, fighting additional issues like organizing pneumonia and blood clots that caused a stroke, Emersen is back to spending time with her friends and family and planning for her future. “Nationwide Children’s is such a special place to me for many reasons,” says Emersen. “But mostly because I know that everyone I met did everything in their power to get me to be a healthy teenager again.”  

The experience she underwent and the care she received at Nationwide Children’s sparked an interest for Emersen in the healthcare field and a desire to help others who are in similar situations.