Help Ashton Get His Wheelchair Van!!!!

Ashton was born on June 10th 2005 at only 24 weeks. He weighed a mere 710grams. Over the course of his time in the NICU he went through blood transfusions, multiple courses of antibiotics, infections, sepsis, hundreds of pokes, weeks and weeks on life support, surgeries and just fighting to survive. After 227 days he finally came home to where he belonged.

Unfortunately he was only home for five days and then returned to hospital where he was placed back on life support and we were told that if he did survive he would never be the same. Well guess what? He proved them wrong. He came home after 30 days.



When Ashton came home from the hospital he was on a monitor so we could watch his heart rate and oxygen levels, supplemental oxygen and he had a feeding tube that went right into his intestines where he was fed by a pump 22 hours each and every day.

By his first birthday he was diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy and legally blind. He received many therapies and our house always seemed to have someone there to work with him on different things.

Just after his first birthday we found out that he was profoundly deaf. My heart shattered in two beause my baby couldn't hear me talking to him. This began our journey towards a cochlear implant and on June 11th 2007 he received the gift of hearing. It has been the most amazing thing that has happened for him!

In August 2008 Ashton was really sick and we took him to the emergency. It was determined that he needed to be placed on life support and taken to McMaster. We don't really know what happened but in the end it didn't matter....he got better and came home.

March 2009 Ashton was very sick yet again. We took him to the emergency room where it was once again not good news. Ashton was in respiratory failure. He was airlifted to Sick Kids that evening. Again, we never found out the cause of him getting so sick but yet again he recovered and came home.

December 2009 Ashton was admitted to McMaster for a trial study of bi-pap to help him breathe better at night. He was totally healthy and doing well and he was so excited to be admitted you would have thought that he was at Disney! (He loves the hopsital). A few days in and things weren't good. They had called a code blue on Ashton in the night. When we met with his doctor it was determined and recommended that Ashton have a tracheostomy done. That was done on December 11th 2009.

Since his tracheotomy Ashton has been doing AMAZING. He can now handle colds and illnesses without having to be admitted to hospital and placed on life support. 

Our issue now is that Ashton is getting bigger and is really uncomfortable while sitting in his car seat. With his cerebral palsy his body is always working against what he wants and he exerts so much force while in the car seat that he is injuring/hurting himself. Add to that, that being in his car seat just isn't safe as he pushes so hard on his trach that he has in the past pushed it completely out while we are driving.