Aid Elliot's Recovery and Family's Stability

Our beautiful baby boy was born 5/10/2024. He was perfect in every way. We were supposed to be discharged from the hospital on Mother’s Day, 5/12/2024. Instead, Elliot was transferred to Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. He was born with an anorectal malformation, sacral agenesis, and a pre-sacral mass. None of these conditions were seen prior to birth. We got this diagnosis after Elliot was not producing stool after birth and it was recommended to take an abdominal X-ray. The radiologist was concerned for an obstruction and recommended immediate transfer to the NICU. In the NICU he had so many test to reach these diagnoses. Elliot has been seeing the pediatric general surgeon at Blank since he was discharged on May 22nd for the anorectal malformation. At this time they do not believe surgical correction will be needed as we have been using dilators to correct the rectal stenosis. As he continues to grow, the dilations could potentially not be successful anymore and surgery might be needed.

June 12th we traveled to Iowa city to meet with the pediatric neurosurgeon to formulate a plan to remove his mass. They are going to repeat a pelvic and lumbar spine MRI with and without contrast on September 11th. Elliot will need to go under general anesthesia to perform this. He will be 4 months old at the time. Once they have completed the MRI, they will be scheduling surgery to remove the mass at 6 months of age. Recovery for this can mean up to 7 days in hospital and 2 weeks out of daycare, meaning I will need to take about one month off of work to care for him while he recovers.

He is also seeing a pediatric urologist. We will be returning to Iowa city on 7/19 for imaging of his bladder and kidneys to make sure they function appropriately. We are hoping for good news here, but with his condition it can affect the way he urinates and defecates. We might not see these issues until his is older and starting to potty train.

To top everything off my husband, Alan, was admitted to the ER for severe abdominal pain on 6/30/2024. We arrived at the hospital around 6:45pm and he was in surgery for a perforated bowel by 1am. He had over one feet of small intestine removed and was almost given a colostomy bag. Thankfully the surgeon was able to reattach the intestines and no colostomy bag was needed. They initially thought he had an hernia as well, but it turned out to be meckles and that caused the perforation. After a week in hospital, he was discharged 7/8/2024. He will need to be out of work for 4-6 weeks.

As you can imagine, our medical expenses are climbing and are only going to continue to climb. We are asking for help to at least cover some costs of our very expensive hospital stays. Since I am still on maternity leave and Alan will not be working for at least a month, we are taking a huge loss in wages.