Aron Matthew Northcraft
Aron’s mother Sara has been an active member of the CHD community, helping to educate people on how to support families after losing a child and advocating at the Legislative Conference in years past. Here she shares his story.
Aron Matthew Northcraft was born January 10, 2007 with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). He was flown immediately after birth to Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC where he underwent the Norwood procedure the following day. He recovered, and in May of 2007, Aron, had the second (aka Glenn) of the three stages of surgeries required of all HLHS babies. The next 22 months of Aron’s life were spent at home simply being a little boy. Aron loved playing ball of all kinds (football and bowling were his favorites), loved Curious George and ADORED his big brothers (almost as much as they adored him)! During this time, it was very easy to forget that Aron was living with a very serious heart condition aside from the many medications he took daily.
Reality finally hit in April of 2009 when Aron went in for the third and final stage of surgery, the Fontan. Aron did not do post-Fontan well, and we found ourselves hearing the words “heart failure” and “transplant.” We soon began the journey to determine what was best for Aron. In October of 2009, we started the process of placing Aron on the heart transplant list. Unfortunately, God had other plans for our sweet boy. Aron passed away on November 19, 2009. He was such a blessing and truly a miracle! Aron will forever be in our hearts and on our minds.
When we started down the transplant road with Aron, I began to feel very angry every time I saw someone smoking. I was angry because Aron had no control over the cards he had been dealt and these “smokers” were destroying their life by their choice! Very soon, I was convicted about my health habits. Although I was not choosing to destroy my body with smoke, I was not eating right or exercising and, therefore, destroying my body by not being healthy. I decided in September (with the help of a very special lady) that I was going to start running. Our Fall was a little crazy…and heart wrenching.
After Aron passed away, I set a goal that I would like to run the Apple Blossom 10K in memory of my sweet boy! Our initial idea was to create “Team Aron” and have at least 4 people running in his memory. The more we talked about it, the more we realized how awesome it would be to have a gigantic team. We wanted to not only run in memory of Aron, but to raise awareness about Congenital Heart Defects and our local CHD support program.
Team Aron produced over 40 runners for the Apple Blossom 10K last year! We have encouraged Team Aron members to wear their shirts (if they are not running for a different cause) in as many races as they run in. In the past year Team Aron has been seen in many local foot races (Apple Blossom, Freedom Run, Apple Trample, Turkey Trot and the South Berkeley Christmas parade), a couple of local triathlons, as well as the Ford Ironman Florida.