Ari Schultz, the 5-year-old from Massachusetts who captured the hearts of many after his parents’ blog shed light on his health ordeal, died Friday, the family said. Ari had more than 10 operations, including a heart transplant.
“Ari passed away peacefully this evening listening to the Red Sox,” Ari’s parents, Mike and Erica Schultz, wrote on their Facebook page on Friday.
A day earlier, Ari’s parents wrote on their Facebook page and blog, “Echo of Hope,” that their son had been admitted to Boston Children’s Hospital’s emergency department and was placed on life support.
“We called 911 at 4:19 a.m. as Ari was having a seizure,” they wrote in a post Thursday morning. “Very scary. At the hospital now. Something is going on. We don’t know what.”
“Just after 10 a.m. Ari coded in the emergency department,” they wrote in a subsequent post. “He had over a half an hour of CPR and has been placed on life support in the cardiac intensive care unit. Path forward unknown.”
Ari made national headlines in mid-June when his parents posted a video of their son learning that he was being discharged from the hospital in just two days, after spending 189 days as an inpatient, 105 days since receiving a heart transplant and 86 days since being in cardiac arrest.
The video, titled “Ari’s Going Home,” shows the little boy wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey and holding a baseball bat as he becomes ecstatic to learn he will be released from the hospital in a matter of days, rather than weeks.
When his father reminds him how long he’s been in the hospital, Ari exclaims, “189 days? That’s crazy!”
And when his father asks him what he wants to do when he returns home, Ari replies, “Maybe go to a baseball field … And after go in the backyard and practice my golf swing.”