Ava Grace Irons

Big changes have come suddenly for our sweet daughter Ava Grace including our location from Rady's Children's Hospital in San Diego to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. The day after Ava's first birthday, on 3/17/21, she started to not be quite herself. She had increased pulmonary hypertension and began to escalate.  She was not responding as hoped to the doctor's interventions. On 3/23/21 we were informed by doctors that they were maxed out on support for Ava Grace.  If things continued to escalate, then the only thing left to do would be ECMO, which may not have even been possible. We had a conference to discuss her current and future status.  They brought up the idea of transferring to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston where they specialize in pediatric pulmonary cases and pediatric lung transplants. This idea was brought up about 6 months ago but was completely off our radar as Ava had made significant progress over last 6 months and was about to be discharged home this month. The morning of 3/24/21, all of Ava's doctors and specialists had a conference and they all felt that she needs to go to Texas. We asked when and they said "today." They told us to go pack our bags.  We had been praying for a sign for what was needed for Ava Grace to recover from this episode and felt this was definitely our sign. We said okay and called our family in tears on our way to pack our bags. It was recommended we get Ava and ourselves there, get situated, and then figure out how to get our 3 year old son. It was so hard to imagine leaving him even for a day but knew this is what we needed to do. Our amazing family has stepped up right away to help out with our son and dog.  The doctor from Texas involved with the Transplant team called me and discussed the plan. He said that there was a risk of survival during transport but trusting that our doctors in San Diego knew her and that their recommendation was to transport her in this window. She was stable after being put on several IV sedation medications and a paralytic. It has been extremely hard to see her like this as she was in a completely different state only about a week ago getting ready to go home. We had just made final touches on her room. Plans changed slightly in that afternoon and her flight was moved to the next morning on 3/25/21. We were so thankful for this extra time.  Only one parent was able to fly with Ava and the other parent could fly commercial airline Houston, Texas.  I ended up flying with Ava in her own personal medical jet and Brandon managed all our suitcases solo on the commercial airline. This has been the biggest lesson in trust I have ever had. We hopped on those planes knowing hardly anything about where we were going.  He placed Ava in the hands of doctors, nurses and a respiratory therapist that did not know her.  We left  son with family, had no planned job in Texas, no long term plan of where to stay, and no car.  We are believing from this huge step of trust in God comes huge miracles. People say everything is bigger in Texas and we are expectant for big Texas sized miracles. Any form of help that anyone is willing to offer us is not too small. We are extremely grateful for all we have been blessed with. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

We set up this GoFundMe page because we realize that people would like to help us. 

We put together a CaringBridge website to be able to share everything we wanted to share.  We plan to use this site as a way to keep all our family and friends updated who have been so wonderful throughout this year.  We can't thank all of you enough who have been praying for Ava Grace and our family! We feel every one of those prayers.  God bless you all.

Please visit https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/avagraceirons to read the whole story.