Our 16 year old (Just turned 16 on March 16th Golden/Sweet 16 bday woohooo!!!) daughter Ayla has had some tough health challenges over the last 1.5 years. Last March, after being extremely sick, she was diagnosed with Diabetes Insipidous. This condition is caused by a hormonal abnormality and is not related to the typical diabetes with insulin and blood sugars. What Diabetes Insipidus is, is the hormone the pituitary gland produces to regulate the intake and output of water in the body. She was drinking gallons of water daily and eventually it started messing with her electrolytes. Because of the intake of so much water she wasnt eating and started to lose weight. Her primary doctor finally referred us to the University of Iowa. 

    Over the course of the year, Ayla endured many blood tests, including MRIs every 3 months. The MRI showed a growth aka thickening of her pituitary stalk which has slowly been growing. On February 2 2023, she had a brain biopsy and the results showed that this growth is Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis (LCH). While it is a less invasive cancer, it still requires chemotherapy for treatment. LCH is so rare that only 5,000 out of 800 million children and teens are diagnosed with it. 

Ayla is scheduled for her port surgery and first chemotherapy treatment on Friday, April, 7. This will be the beginning of her year-long treatment. She will receive treatment for 5 days and then has a 3-week break. Each week of treatment, on the first day, she will receive chemo at the Children's Hospital in Iowa City. Then the following 4 days she will continue her treatment at home through medications and injections. While Ayla has a challenging year ahead of her, she has been nothing but brave. She truly is one tough 16-year-old girl. 

There has been an increasing number of people asking how they can help. We believe a donation is the best way at this point to aid with traveling back and forth to Iowa City, medical bills, and making Ayla as comfortable as possible throughout this next year of treatment.

 As you can imagine this journey is not only going to take a toll on Ayla but also on Ayla’s family as they will have to continuously take time off work for all the doctor appointments and treatments and everything that goes along with this. 

Any donations will directly help her and her family.

We cannot express our gratitude and many thanks for anyone who wishes to donate and help us along the way.