‘He was so dang special’
Ryder woman honors great-nephew through blood drive
BY JAMES C. FALCON
james@nordaknorth.com
Thirty-one units of blood were donated at the Ryder Community Center on May 3. In doing so, they honored the memory of a Ryder boy whose life depended on blood donations like theirs. For the past seven years, Amber Ouellette of Ryder has organized a blood drive to memorialize her grand-nephew, Easton Braaten, who died one month short of his third birthday in 2015. Braaten, who was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, needed blood transfusions to help keep up where his heart defect could not. Hypoplastic left heart syndrome affects normal blood flow to the heart. The left side of the heart does not form correctly during pregnancy; because of this, the heart is affected in many ways, including the fact that the left side of the heart cannot pump blood to the body properly. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of 3,841 babies in the United States are born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. And on May 3, 2012, at the University of
Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Easton was one of them.
