UPDATE: TikTok star Elyse Myers is sharing an update after her six-month-old son, Oliver, underwent open heart surgery.
Alongside a photo of Oliver’s hospital crib, Myers wrote, “Oliver’s surgery went incredibly well and his heart is getting stronger with each hour that passes!”
“His body is slowly learning how to get used to working differently than it had before, and it’ll take some time for him to get used to this new heart & lung function but everyone is really encouraged by his progress. I’ve had more coffee than sleep, everyone is so kind, and we’re taking it one hour at a time.”
TikTok star Elyse Myers is known for her hilariously real way of presenting her real life experience, but she’s also a business owner, a wife, and a mom of two young children.
Roughly five months ago, Elyse and her husband Jonas welcomed their second son into the world. The couple named their little one Oliver.
And while Elyse and Jonas never put their children on social media, Elyse has shared a rare story about her youngest son and his recent health battle.
As Elyse explained in her latest TikTok video, she’s been a bit absent on the app because she’s been by her infant son’s side as he prepares to undergo heart surgery. According to the mom, her family first learned of Oliver’s heart issues during his four month routine check up.
@elysemyers Thank you to everyone at Children’s Hospital for the incredible care you continue to give Oliver. ❤️????
♬ original sound – Elyse Myers
During the check up, his doctor detected a slight murmur during an EKG. At the time, the doctor told Elyse, “You know it’s probably nothing. We’ll just send you to cardiology so that can get a little echocardiogram and confirm that it’s just an innocent murmur. He’ll grow out of it.”
But as Elyse continued, it wasn’t just an innocent murmur. “The tech found a very large whole in my son’s heart, between the bottom two chambers of his heart. It just doesn’t close and he was born with VSD and we didn’t know that and we never caught it.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, “A ventricular septal defect (VSD) is a hole in the heart that’s present at birth (congenital heart defect). The hole is between the lower heart chambers (right and left ventricles). It allows oxygen-rich blood to move back into the lungs instead of being pumped to the rest of the body.”
The next day, the Myers family were called in to bring Oliver so that he could get a heart catheter “so that we can really assess what’s going on. The echo could only give us so much. But in order to kinda decipher whether he needs surgery or not, we really need to get in there and kind of test the environment.”
Elyse got emotional as she revealed that Oliver will need to have heart surgery in the next couple of weeks. Thankfully, the “doctors are really confident that after the surgery he will recover and grow right on track and they seem to think that this will not affect him in life later after this is all fixed up.”
And while the prognosis is good, the TikToker admits it’s been an overwhelming process for their family. “It’s just been every minute of the day kinda finding new information out and having to take it one step at a time.”
“Jonas and I are handling it together and we’re learning on each other.”
Because Elyse and Jonas prefer to keep their children’s lives private, Elyse revealed that she won’t offer too many more updates on TikTok but wanted to share why she has been away from her platform over the last few weeks.
“We love you guys. It’s gonna be okay. He’s going to be good. We’re going to be good.”