Gore Family Kidney Adventure

We are a family of 6. Chris and I have been married for nearly 6 years.  Our son, Aiden, is 7 and has been diagnosed with Autism, OCD, ADHD, and Tourettes. He is homeschooled and is the most snuggly, sweet, and compassionate boy who truly does not know a stranger. Our identical twin girls, Abigail and Amelia, are nearly 5 years old.  They love all critters and can often be found in our yard catching frogs or playing with their excessive amounts of stuffed animals.  Abigail is bold and opinionated, while Amelia is shy and reserved.  Our youngest, Aurora Joy, is 18 months old and unnaturally happy. She is fearless and clearly the comedian of the family. Amelia was born was born with chronic kidney disease, spina bifida occulta with a tethered cord and neurogenic bladder and bowel.  She requires a life-saving kidney transplant preceded by a Mitrofanoff and Mace procedure (so that so she can have some form of continence) to protect her new kidney from infection. We have found a surgeon at UCLA willing to do her bladder and bowel surgeries which will give her continence, but it is not without risk. There are often complications from these procedures and given Amelia’s precarious kidney health it could be the thing that tips her over the edge, making her require hemodialysis until her kidney transplant. If her health deteriorates we will have to stay and do dialysis daily until transplant. We will be doing the transplant in San Diego at Rady’s Children’s Hospital where she feels most comfortable and the team there has the most experience with her. We are incredibly blessed to have free flight benefits through my husbands employer, so our travel from Vancouver to San Diego and UCLA will be mostly covered. The surgeries themselves will be completely covered by our insurance after a $4,400 deductible. We need help to cover the deductible, some minor travel expenses (like food and rental vehicles) and general living expenses during the 3 to 6 month recovery period for these procedures.  My husband will be the one donating his kidney and is our sole source of income, so he will not be working during his 6-week recovery process. We will need to maintain our residence in Vancouver for when my husband goes back to work while the kids and I stay in San Diego until Amelia is stable enough to leave. It has been a long, hard road! We have been faced with seemingly impossible challenges, but God has always provided for our family. We cannot make this happen without help from our “village”, and so we are asking for donations. Even a small donation can help chip away at these expenses. Amelia is a tiny but fierce little girl who deserves to thrive, not just survive!  Thank you for taking the time to hear our story.