We are hoping to fundraise for our 3 year old daughter, Alice. Alice was born premature and has had more than her share of health problems in her short life. She was diagnosed with 2 congenital heart defects at birth (ASD and VSD), and she sees a cardiologist in London for those. She has required two different feeding tubes (an NG that graduated to a G), and later required a cranial helmet to correct issues with her head shape caused by the need for the feeding tubes. She has experienced many developmental delays due to these issues, but most have resolved on their own with exception to speech. No matter what we have tried, our little girl just wouldn't talk to us. We now have an answer for that: Despite passing her infant hearing test, Alice has severe bilateral hearing loss (left and right are about equal).  We don't have all the answers yet, but Alice suffered from a combo of pneumonia and RSV during Christmas 2019. That resulted in an ear infection, followed by a head tilt and balance loss. We believe this is when she lost her hearing, but it has unfortunately taken over a year to get diagnosed (the concerns were originally more for neurology or genetic conditions due to the other slew of health issues she had been suffering during that time.) 

Hearing aids, unfortunately, are not covered by OHIP and the ones Alice will need are $5000CAD. We were not expecting hearing loss at all as all doctors mentioned it mostly as an afterthought (we could check this, but it's unlikely because hearing loss doesn't run in your family, etc). So finding out she had SEVERE hearing loss and then getting hit with a $5000 estimate was...rough. We will be covered for $1000 of this by the ADP fund through the government and we will be able to foot $2500 of the bill without assistance, but this is all we were able to get together unfortunately, so we are asking for help. We make too much money to get government assistance outside of the ADP (the cut off is $70,000 a year pre tax). Alice will be given loaner hearing aids on the 22nd but we are unsure how long we are allowed to keep those, so we are scrambling to get the funds together as soon as possible to ensure we do not have to take her hearing aids back once she gets used to having her hearing. We most certainly understand that this is a very difficult time, financially and otherwise, for everyone so we are aware we may not be able to raise the full $1500 or even close and we will continue working hard to make sure Alice gets what she needs, but every bit helps. Even if you are not able to donate, please share if you can, we appreciate every share and donation, no matter how small. 

Thank you for reading our story <3