For most of her young life, 5-year-old Sienna Barton has known hospitals more intimately than playgrounds. Born with a rare congenital heart defect, she spent nearly three years fighting for her life inside intensive care units. Now, with a new heart and a second chance at childhood, she is finally home in Saratoga Springs, Utah.

Sienna was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a condition in which the left side of the heart fails to fully develop and cannot pump blood effectively. According to the Mayo Clinic, the defect is rare but life-threatening, often requiring a series of complex surgeries in infancy and early childhood.

Doctors at Intermountain Health in Utah performed two open-heart surgeries on Sienna in her first years of life, but complications eventually led to severe heart failure. To keep her alive, physicians implanted a mechanical device to assist her heart while she waited for a donor match. That wait stretched into an agonizing 28 months.

“We flew [to Texas] May 28 and she got her heart transplant June 25,” Sienna’s mother, Francesca Barton, told ABC affiliate KTVX. The family had relocated to Texas Children’s Hospital, where the transplant team performed the life-saving operation. “And then we were required to stay 90–100 days in Texas post-transplant,” Francesca explained.

In all, Sienna spent 975 days in hospitals between Utah and Texas, NBC affiliate KSL reported. “She was two years old when she went into the hospital and now she’s five,” her father, Fano Barton, said, marveling at how much of her childhood had unfolded within hospital walls.

The moment Sienna returned home was nothing short of triumphant. Neighbors filled the streets with pink and purple balloons and streamers, waving handmade signs to celebrate her homecoming. For a girl who had spent most of her life surrounded by monitors and machines, the sight of her entire community cheering her return was a reminder of just how many people had walked this journey with her.

Speaking with KTVX, Francesca said the welcome was overwhelming. “We knew we had a big village of support, but I didn’t expect it to be so many people. So many people have been behind us helping our family.”

For Sienna, the challenges are not fully over—heart transplant patients face lifelong monitoring, medication, and risks of rejection. But for the first time in nearly 1,000 days, she has the freedom to simply be a child again, at home with her family, surrounded by a community that never stopped believing she would make it back.