If you saw six-year-old Avery in her dance class today, you’d never guess that she almost died from a heart defect. She underwent her first open heart surgery shortly after birth, and the procedure left much of her heart damaged. After two months in the hospital, she was deemed healthy enough to go home. But her mom, Jess Blias, rushed her back a few weeks later because Avery had “turned blue.” Her heart was only pumping at half its capacity, and she needed another surgery.

Doctors started preparing her for a heart transplant, but they noticed that during the brief moments when they disconnected her from ECMO, the machine that pumped her blood, in order to clean the tubes, her heart