On January 5, 2023, the first day back to school after winter break, 11-year-old Anabelle sat down to dinner with her family. A previously healthy child, Anabelle suffered a massive seizure causing five strokes at the dinner table. When the ambulance arrived at her home, she went into cardiac arrest, medically dying three times. Paramedics rushed Annabelle to Children's Health Medical Center in Dallas, where she was listed as critically ill. After a tense three-week wait in the intensive care unit, where she was kept in a medically induced coma, doctors discovered the cause of the brain bleed—a 3mm cerebral aneurysm. Experts initially told Anabelle's family that she would not walk, talk or see out of her right eye again. However, after 86 days, Anabelle walked out of the hospital! She's now home, back in school and re-learning how to navigate life as a preteen girl.
"We still have much healing ahead, but thanks to the exceptional medical care at Children's Health, she is here and thriving," said Anabelle's mom, Kylee Snyder, a customer experience manager at Bank of Texas.
Anabelle is one of the many superhero patients that Children's Health cares for, each with a unique story of resilience and courage. As a nonprofit pediatric health system in North Texas, Children's Health is one of the only hospital systems in North Texas with the depth of experience and breadth of specialties to handle everything from routine illnesses and injuries to the most complex care for kids like Annabelle.
A day of joyful reprieve
Every year in April, superhero patients attend Cape Day. Part fundraiser and part celebration, Cape Day brings together community members, nurses, doctors and hospital staff to honor the children courageously fighting against illness and injury. Patients at Children's Health receive a cape as a signal of their strength. They also get to meet “real-life” superheroes like Batman and Spider-Man, who have been known to scale the outside of the hospital on window-washing chairs.
Bank of Texas Community Relations Specialist Margaux Dablin has volunteered multiple times at Cape Day and has seen firsthand the happy escape the day provides. "The kids are excited to receive a cape as they and their families get to take a break from their current situation," she shared. "It means a lot to spread some cheer and make a child's day during their stay at the hospital."
Bank of Texas has been the Cape Day presenting sponsor since 2018, donating $142,000 to the hospital. Employee volunteers also participate in the Cape Day event. In fact, almost exactly one year after Annabelle left the hospital, her mom and 16 other Bank of Texas employees volunteered at Cape Day this spring. All of Cape Day proceeds help fund efforts to invest in life-saving research, enhance behavioral health programs, train pediatricians to provide kids earlier access to mental health care, and support critical patient and family support services for patients like Anabelle, for which Snyder is deeply grateful.
"Everyone at Children's Health was just so good at not giving up," she said. "We were dealing with the worst event of our lives. They took care of Anabelle—and they also took care of us."
Top of page: Bank of Texas volunteers, including Kylee Snyder (left), prepare an interactive station for patients at Children's Health on Cape Day.
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