{"id":155225,"date":"2026-02-14T05:18:33","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T05:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/155225\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T05:18:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T05:18:33","slug":"local-mom-tells-sons-heart-defect-story-for-congenital-heart-defect-awareness-week-action-news-jax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/155225\/","title":{"rendered":"Local mom tells son\u2019s heart defect story for Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week \u2013 Action News Jax"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla \u2014 A Jacksonville mom is encouraging others to donate blood in honor National Congenital Heart Awareness Week. This cause hits home for Lisa Floyd after her son Emmett was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect the day after he was born.<\/p>\n

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Local mom tells son\u2019s heart defect story for Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week Courtesy of The Healing Hearts Project (The Healing Hearts Project)<\/p>\n

Floyd says Emmett was diagnosed with Common Arterial Trunk. \u201cBasically it means his heart was not able to separate the incoming and outgoing blood. Everything was getting mixed up together,\u201d said Floyd. Emmett would require surgery at just two weeks old to create the separation. Floyd adds that because he was so small, he didn\u2019t have enough blood in his body to operate the machines needed to perform the surgery and needed blood products to move forward. Floyd says the treatments don\u2019t grow with Emmett, so he needed ongoing surgeries. So far, the now 10-year-old Emmett had another surgery when he was two and a half years old and had a procedure done last June.<\/p>\n

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Local mom tells son\u2019s heart defect story for Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week Courtesy of The Healing Hearts Project (The Healing Hearts Project)<\/p>\n

Floyd is an ambassador to The Healing Hearts Project, a community support group that she said, \u201chelps families in Northeast Florida navigate the congenital heart failure life.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Local mom tells son\u2019s heart defect story for Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week Courtesy of The Healing Hearts Project (The Healing Hearts Project)<\/p>\n

James Skahn, the District Recruitment Manager at LifeSouth Community Blood Centers, said \u201cwe are perpetually in and out of emergency need, which would be under a two day supply of blood for hospitals.\u201d Skahn says ideally, the blood bank would like to have a three days supply but the more the better. \u201cLocally, it\u2019s always been an issue. It\u2019s something that we\u2019re trying get as many people out to the blood drives as possible.<\/p>\n

You can hear more on Emmett\u2019s journey, and how you can help in the full interview with Lisa Floyd and James Skahn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can find more information on upcoming blood drives on the LifeSouth website<\/a>. <\/p>\n

You can learn more about The Healing Hearts Project<\/a> on their website.<\/p>\n

\u25b6 Listen to Jacksonville\u2019s Morning News Interviews<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to download our free news, weather and traffic app. And click here<\/a> to subscribe to our daily 3 Big Things newsletter.<\/p>\n

\u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla \u2014 A Jacksonville mom is encouraging others to donate blood in honor National Congenital Heart Awareness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[796,74726,74720,794,74723,28,74721,116,118,117,74725,74722,74724,795,349],"class_list":{"0":"post-155225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-796","9":"tag-blood-donation","10":"tag-congenital-heart-defect-week","11":"tag-duval","12":"tag-emmett","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-healing-hearts-project","15":"tag-jacksonville","16":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","17":"tag-jacksonville-news","18":"tag-james-skahn","19":"tag-lifesouth-community-blood-centers","20":"tag-lisa-floyd","21":"tag-ne-florida","22":"tag-northeast-florida"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}