GATESVILLE, Texas (KWTX) - Kiahaura Mateo is an 8-month-old little girl from Gatesville who’s currently in the hospital battling leukemia, getting diagnosed after just having open heart surgery.

“This is the most painful, heartbreaking… anything that you can think about, this is it,” Kiahaura’s mother, Karina Mateo, shared.

Mateo says she learned Kiahaura had down syndrome well before she was even born, finding out a month before she gave birth that Kiahaura also had a hole in her heart.

“Because of the placement of the hole, they needed to do heart surgery, and they couldn’t do it through the shoulder so they had to do open heart,” Mateo explained.

Having that surgery when she was just six months old. But the surgery was a success and everything seemed fine… until it wasn’t.

“On the

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