Aubrey Stecklein was a healthy and happy 17 month old girl. She enjoyed playing outside, listening to music, and playing with animals.
On Friday, September 18th, everything changed. Aubrey was admitted into St. Lukes hospital for extreme dehydration, and extremely elevated fevers. After the Doctors did some blood work, it was decided that she needed to be seen by a specialist at The University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
When she arrived she was further assessed, and within a couple of hours she was taken to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. At this time the staff believed that Aubrey was battling some type of Meningitis. During her first few hours in the PICU more lab work was done. We discovered that her blood was infected, and that she needed to have a spinal tap preformed to make sure there was no infection in her spinal fluid. Because of the abnormalities in her blood work she required two platelet transfusions and one blood transfusion before the spinal tap could be done. When her platelet levels were where they needed to be, the spinal tap was done. The test results showed that her spinal fluid, was in fact, infected.
The doctors then confirmed that Aubrey did test positive for Bacterial Meningitis from Haemophilus Influenzae. Because of the infection, the Doctors wanted to have a chest X-ray done to see if the infection had spread to her lungs. The X-ray showed a small amount of haziness, so an EKG was ordered.
The EKG came back sowing that Aubrey has a Aortopulmanary Window in her heart. This is completely unrelated to the infection she is fighting, but is still something that needs attention. So once she is cleared and recovered from Meningitis she will have a procedure done to close the window.
After six days in PICU Aubrey was finally stable enough to be moved to the Impatient floor. Her oxygen tube was taken out, and her Central Line was removed and replaced with a long term PICC line in her leg. Things were finally starting to look up for Aubrey!
On Wednesday, September 30th, Aubrey had a follow up MRI and hearing test done. The MRI came back showing the infection on her brain had gone down! The hearing test however, had unfortunately came back saying that Aubrey had suffered from profound hearing loss, or deafness, in both ears.

The money raised by this fundraiser will be going towards Aubrey’s medical bills. Including her hospital stay, lab tests, heart procedure, Cochlear Implants, medication and future therapy she will need. This is a long road that Aubrey is on. She needs her parents to be with her, to help get her back to the happy and healthy girl she once was.

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