Aid for Ramon: Overcoming Health Struggles

My name is Jordan Mendoza. I am the mother of my son, Ramon Mendoza, who is 11 years old.

My son Ramon suffers from baby shake syndrome, which he developed when he was 3 months old by his birth mother. I adopted him when he was 3 years old to give him the life and love he deserves with me, his dad (my husband), and our other 2 kids.

Ramon has a lot of health problems, from having a trach to a g-tube and shunts in his head. He can't see you, and he also can't talk to you. He is bed-bound with dislocated hips and a very bad spine as well. He also depends on an oxygen machine.

Ramon was staying in a nursing home for the last five years due to his medical condition. It was getting too hard on us and a lot of work. But when we moved to Kentucky, we got our lives figured out and taken care of. We made his own room and got everything he needed. We told the nursing home in Vegas we would be coming to take him home, knowing they couldn't hold him against us and we could take him wherever we wanted. They put up a fight trying to make sure we didn't take him, but we ended up winning and taking him home with us to live in Kentucky. I'm glad we did because he had signs of nursing home abuse as well.

Once we got home in Kentucky, not even 4 hours went by before Ramon started having seizures and couldn't keep his oxygen up. We called 911 to get them here ASAP. They flew him to Children's Hospital in Louisville, where he ended up in the PICU department for over a month.

Once it was time to go home, he was so happy to go home with us. He was doing so well for over a month and has been since he got out of the hospital in December.

Last night, on Jan 29th, he ended up back in the hospital. But this time, the helicopter was busy and couldn't make it to fly him to Children's Hospital, so they ended up taking him to Baptist Health in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Once we got there, the doctor and nurses didn't know what to do with him. They were just standing around looking at him and letting him suffer even more, watching his oxygen level go down and down. They did NOT have proper equipment for kids his age or for any kids; they even said that. They did not know how to handle his trach or clear it while he was coughing out a lot of blood from his lungs. They could barely answer my questions about what was going on. But they chose to ventilate him without putting him to sleep so he wouldn't suffer more during the ventilator process.

They got him on a ventilator, but the one they used was also the wrong size; it was made for adults because, like I said, they didn't have the right size for kids.

The helicopter for Children's Hospital finally came, and you could tell they were not happy with what the other hospital did to him.

As of the morning of Jan 30th, Ramon is admitted to the PICU again at Norton Children's Hospital on a ventilator as well.

The reason I am making this is to help with medical bills as my husband and I do not work and we can't afford these bills we are getting thrown at us. With other kids at home too, we need to be able to support all three of them and keep a roof over all their heads.

Please share this as well.

I'll continue to update on Ramon as well.