Help Aubrey Walk

To our family and friends.. the time has finally come that we really lean on our community. It has come to my attention I cannot no matter how hard I try, make remotely enough money at home while being Aubrey’s primary caregiver to fund our next steps myself. Thank you so much for following and supporting my creative ideas to make money for our family the last 5 years. It’s been a wild ride and I’m tired. So tired of trying to “do it all” and I’m left feeling defeated. So thank you for all your support and encouragement that has brought us here. Many have asked us if we would just fundraise but I didn’t want to have to and terrified to rely on others financially, but it’s time to trust that what is for Aubrey, will be available to Aubrey in this final chapter of Aubrey’s (hopefully temporary) disability.

For those who are just finding us this is our story.

Aubrey is our third child. She came into this world like a wrecking ball, quite literally haha. Very intense birth for me, thankfully she was healthy. I wished to never see inside of an ER, OR, see Dr.’s or any part of a hospital ever again. However, life had other plans. Between 6-9 months of age, Aubrey started to show delays in her milestones. By 11 months I had a gut feeling something was off and booked her in to see our family dr who ended up agreeing that Aubrey needed to see a paediatrician for a more thorough look over. If you’re also Canadian, you will know that this took some time. Wait times for everything is insane. By this time Aubrey was bum shuffling and getting quite good at it. Our paediatrician found it quite interesting and was convinced Aubrey had CP. She ran tons of tests that all came back negative and so began more and more referrals and tests. Aubrey’s bum shuffling advanced to bunny hops, to knee walking and by the age of 3 she finally learned how to crawl like a baby but preferred knee walking. Aubrey just celebrated her 4th birthday and has undergone all Canada has to offer for testing and imaging to explain her symptoms which did in fact rule out CP. With that being said, we are still waiting on a full DNA panel but that can take 2-4 years and since we are non-urgent we will be waiting a long time. We have also tried casting which failed. Along with AFO’s which she hated and started showing signs of skin break down immediately. She has seen several specialists with no answers as to why her body performs the way it does. “It just doesn’t make sense” they all say.

In the summer I had shared my birth story on my social media and because of that I have befriended someone who took the time to go over her birth story and all her son has gone through and shared the therapy and surgeon they used. They have the most incredible and encouraging success story along with SO many other families around the world who have gone through similar journeys with the same and/or other 2 surgeons who perform this surgery. We have been seeing the same ABM therapist since November and we have seen incredible improvements with Aubrey’s speech, movement and stability. Within 10 minutes of our first appointment I felt like I got a better understanding of Aubrey than I have in 3 years of seeing surgeons and specialists. It felt SO good and it still does. To see her continue to progress is why we continue. Therapy is very costly and 5 hours away from our home that Aubrey does one week (2 appointments a day) a month. It’s hard but worth it.

Since there are no reasons as to why Aubrey can’t walk she’s a great candidate for surgery and we have decided to take the next steps to have SPML surgery in NJ and with that we need rehabilitation to make sure Aubrey unlearns old habits of a high arch and learns to walk with her heals down so we don’t have to do surgery again. We have a long road ahead of us even after surgery. We are raising funds for the surgery, travel, food and accommodations, special AFO’s and therapy post op. We are shooting for surgery this September as we would like to have this done and a big chunk of rehab completed before she starts kindergarten so her schooling isn’t interrupted and her education isn’t negatively affected.

Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to read our story. It means a lot. If you’d like to follow along with some of what we share regarding Aubrey’s journey you can find us on IG @aubreysplaytherapy

To any other parents who have also had to undergo medical treatments or surgery with their kids.. nothing prepares us for this. The “why’s”, the “how will we figure

this out”, the “how can I mentally stand strong and fight for my child when I’m barely holding on” and the constant overwhelm is a lot. I see you now, and I just want to give you the biggest virtual hug. This is a lot.