Posted March 1, 2022

Teresa Elena Mataya was born on June 22, 2017, in Nashville, Tennessee, at Monroe Carrell Jr. Children’s Hospital (Vanderbilt). She was diagnosed prenatally with the 22q11.2 microdeletion syndrome and an Interrupted Aortic Arch Type B. Four days after birth, she had surgery to repair the arch. They then had to go in again to stop bleeding later that night.

As part of the heart surgery, one of her vocal cords was paralyzed, so Teresa needed a feeding tube put in. During the G-tube implantation, the surgeon ’nicked’ a major blood vessel and she nearly died; she was saved by the cardiac anesthesiologist.

Shortly after her discharge from the hospital, we moved to San Antonio, Texas. She has had several surgeries since, including surgery to correct a tethered spinal cord.

Teresa is currently being homeschooled due to her speech delays (due to VPI) and lower-than-normal immune system. Teresa loves counting, and she can count past ten in five languages (English, Spanish, French, Basque, and Latin)!

Before COVID-19, Teresa was involved with gymnastics with an organization called Kinetic Kids. Teresa loves her toy kitchen and has been “cooking” lots of food for her mommy while she’s pregnant with Teresa’s little sister. She’s involved in hippotherapy (horse-therapy) and is improving daily with that. She also loves going to “ball-games” with her daddy (baseball, soccer, rugby, etc.).

While Teresa has had a lot of struggles in her short life so far, she is very positive about everything and loves being with her mommy and daddy. She loves her doctors at Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, and she loves going on “adventures” with her daddy to places like the Spanish Missions in San Antonio.