Four-year-old Ava Martins spent Halloween night sedated in a hospital bed instead of trick-or-treating, recovering from a heart procedure that took a turn no one expected. Days later, her Acushnet, Massachusetts neighbors made sure she didn’t miss out entirely, turning their porches back into a candy-filled wonderland just for her.
Ava entered the hospital about a week before Halloween for a procedure related to truncus arteriosus, a rare heart condition, according to localmemphis.com. Her mother, Rebekah Clancy, said a surgical complication extended their hospital stay beyond what the family had planned for. As wbsm.com reported, “There was a complication with Ava’s heart surgery, so she and her family ended up spending more time at the hospital than they originally expected.”
According to turnto10.com, Clancy said the complication involved an accidental nick to Ava’s liver during the procedure, telling the outlet, “They accidentally nicked her liver, so we were there longer than expected.” The same report notes that Ava was heavily sedated for several days and simply wasn’t awake when Halloween came and went on October 31.
A Mother’s Plea Finds Its Answer
When Ava woke up, she asked when she would get to go trick-or-treating, her mother said. That question sent Clancy to Facebook, where she asked her community for help giving her daughter a Halloween after all. The post reportedly drew roughly 200 comments and included more than 100 addresses from neighbors willing to participate.
The response, Clancy said, was overwhelming. “Hundreds of families were willing to get back in costume to hand out candy for my little girl,” she said, per the station’s report. Families reportedly offered to keep their decorations up, put their costumes back on, and hand out as much candy as the children could carry.
Trick-or-Treating, Take Two
The do-over unfolded Monday night as, in the station’s words, “the entire town of Acushnet rallied together.” Ava and her sister, Lilah, went door to door through their neighborhood in the first week of November, dressed up once more and greeted at each stop with candy, gifts, and words of encouragement, per the same account.
The girls reportedly visited about 10 houses before calling it a night, though even the local fire department got in on the goodwill, inviting them to stop by for a sweet treat along the way. For a family that spent an unplanned stretch of days inside a hospital, it was a small parade of porches that gave Ava back the holiday she’d slept through.
Clancy said the community’s kindness made her happy, adding that she was grateful to the strangers who stepped up to make Halloween special for her daughter. The CDC describes truncus arteriosus as a critical congenital heart defect, noting that a baby born with the condition, in which a single blood vessel emerges from the heart instead of the usual two, may need surgery or other procedures soon after birth, according to the CDC.
