Country singer Rory Feek has revealed that his 12-year-old daughter, Indiana, was airlifted to hospital two weeks after undergoing open heart surgery. In a blog post, Feek described how the ordeal began with a headache, a cough and vomiting before Indiana passed out, prompting him and his wife Rebecca to call the emergency services. He said neither he nor his wife had ever been so frightened, writing that at one point they feared they had lost her.

The family initially travelled by ambulance to a hospital in Waco, Texas, before Indiana was airlifted to a facility in Austin. Doctors found that the area around her heart had filled with fluid, constricting its ability to beat properly, and took her into surgery to drain it — a complication they attributed to inflammation from the earlier operation rather than anything the parents did. Surgeons drained 610 ccs of fluid, which had caused the heart area to swell to twice its normal size. Indiana was out of surgery within two hours, her heart rate improved immediately, and doctors say she is expected to make a full recovery.