Dr. Ronald Day, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah and Trevor's pediatric cardiologist, describes a little boy who has been through a lot and will go through much more. But he's also a child with a lot of reason to hope for a healthier future.

"If his valves remain open and don't leak much, he may have a good long-term prognosis. But he will probably need more surgery down the road as he grows. He might need to be considered for a transplantation if his heart fails to pump well when he is older," he says. "Right now, he's not that restricted. And kids that age tend to do what they want to do."

Between crises Trevor is able to let go and be a kid. Tommy has a harder time moving past the fear.

"In a way, you just kind of want to let it go," dad Tommy says. "You don't want to spend your life dwelling on what might happen in the future."

Good times and bad

Day helped organize an event that Tommy says helped the family through one of their toughest times. A few days before the heart surgery in January, the nonprofit Make-A-Wish Foundation threw a party for Trevor — an entire day set aside for fun.

As Trevor playfully fought characters from the movie "Star Wars" and opened gift after gift, Emily was hovering over her brother's shoulder — she was all smiles. Everyone else was looking at Trevor and, in some cases, trying to hold back tears.

Although Tommy was consumed before and in the days after the surgery with thoughts of his son, he made a conscious effort to think of Emily.

"It was hard," he says. "You feel like you want to give Trevor so much. ... You know Emily is going to be around. It might be an unfair thing to say, but you don't know if Trevor is." Tommy pauses. "You just feel like you want to spend every minute you can with him, and Emily, it does make it hard on Emily."

Yet the two act like any other set of siblings. They play together. They roughhouse. They have fun.

And if she minds that so much of the attention centers on her brother, it doesn't show. "He deserves it," Emily says.

When Trevor has one of his surgeries, Jenny and Tommy take off work and Emily leaves school for a few days. Tommy, who lives in Harrisville, is a production supervisor in Ogden for a heating and air conditioning company. Jenny is a bartender in Riverdale and has gone back to school to become a nurse.

The return to work and, in Emily's case, school, each time Trevor gets out of the hospital means regaining some sense of normalcy. Emily says she gets worried and scared for her brother when he's in the hospital.

Before one of his surgeries, her class made a blanket with teddy bears and moons for Trevor.