“Well, we are now,” Mackenzie, now 11, interjected. “It’s the hardest thing you can do, is to hand your child over for something as serious as that,” van Kampen said. SUPPLIED Mackenzie van Kampen’s heart stopped twice during a procedure to remove blood clots from her heart in September 2020. After an hour and a half of surgery – to remove two clots and insert stents – the news came that it hadn’t gone at all to plan. Mackenzie’s heart had stopped twice, and the surgical team had to do an emergency chest opening and heart massage. She would spend seven days on a bypass machine which did the work of her heart during the fortnight she was in the paediatric intensive care unit.