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“I didn’t come to this cause through personal pain. I came to it through something harder to explain. A moral weight I could not set down.”
In his own words
New Release · Letters to the Waiting Room · Now Available on Amazon
New · 2026
Letters to the
Waiting Room For Every Family Touched by Congenital Heart Disease Fourteen letters for the parent in the minutes after the diagnosis. The mother the night before surgery. The sibling who learned to need less. The adult survivor the week before the appointment. The family who did not get the outcome they were hoping for. Some things are said in waiting rooms.
This book is for everything that isn’t.
Waiting Room For Every Family Touched by Congenital Heart Disease Fourteen letters for the parent in the minutes after the diagnosis. The mother the night before surgery. The sibling who learned to need less. The adult survivor the week before the appointment. The family who did not get the outcome they were hoping for. Some things are said in waiting rooms.
This book is for everything that isn’t.
1 in 100
Children are born with a congenital heart defect. Every family navigating it deserves to feel, in the hardest hours, that someone has thought carefully about what they are carrying.
What Adrian Does
Three areas of focus
01
Author
Books written directly for the CHD community, for families, caregivers, and the children themselves. Published under the Teneritas imprint. Written for the moments that medicine cannot reach.
View the books →
02
Advocate
Public education, storytelling, and institutional collaboration to bring congenital heart disease out of the shadows and into the national conversation where it belongs.
See the advocacy →
03
Founder
Heartbeat Forward is a federally recognized 501(c)(3) delivering care packages to children in cardiac units and working toward the funding of life-saving heart surgeries for children in need.
Visit the nonprofit →
Published Works
Books for the CHD community
New · 2026
Letters to the Waiting Room
For Every Family Touched by Congenital Heart Disease
Fourteen letters addressed to the specific people who orbit congenital heart disease. Written for the 2am hours, the night before surgery, the parking lot after. One of these letters belongs to you.
Get on Amazon →
Available Now
The Quiet Majority
Why Congenital Heart Disease Deserves to Be Seen
A call to visibility for the most common birth defect in the world. One in one hundred children. Families carrying something enormous, mostly in silence. This book says: not anymore.
Learn more →