4-year-old survives heart disease, loves Justin Bieber

MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) – Over 36,000 babies are born every year with a heart defect.  Winston and Sondra Glover's daughter, Alexis is one of them.  As part of February's "Heart Month" for the American Heart Association, they're sharing their story to get the word out that heart disease can affect us all.

Alexis Glover has "Bieber fever." It's hard to contain this four-year-old on the dance floor.  It's also hard to imagine that under that tee-shirt is a scar, her badge of honor after open heart surgery.

"She just didn't … she wasn't acting right one day," Winston Glover remembered.

At seven months old this little girl was sick ...really sick.  A trip to Waccamaw Community Hospital ended with an emergency trip to MUSC.

"Of course the doctor comes out of the operating room maybe an hour after we were there and says, 'Your baby is dying'," Winston Glover said.  "She has a benign tumor that had fallen into her tricuspid valve."

Blood was barely getting in and out of Alexis' heart.

"She was flown to MUSC February10.  She was placed on ECMO, they put her in a coma, and on Februay15 they determined she was well enough to go into surgery," Sondra Glover recalled.

We're talking about open heart surgery on that little 7 month old baby.

The days that followed moved so slow for her parents.

"You have your highs and you have your lows," Sondra Glover confessed.  "You see her on this machine and you see all the blood she is getting.  And now you would never know."

Alexis hasn't had any problems since the surgery ... she's thrived even.  But her family likes to remember the life that was saved...her life.

"Every year on the 15th we let her pick where she wants to go eat and what she wants to do," Sondra Glover said.  "We have a cake made in the shape of a heart."

It's very fitting for a child whose heart has been through so much ... and beats strong today.

Young or old The American Heart Association is on the front lines - helping to raise money for new treatments.  This Saturday they're hoping the Heart Ball in Myrtle Beach will bring in some well needed cash for that effort - they want to raise $175,000.