Hi! I'm starting this GoFundMe on behalf of Daniel and Isabella. We started as neighbors but quickly turned to close family friends.

On 2/5/2025, Daniel was rushed to the hospital at 5 AM, from pain only to discover he had a perforation in small intestines and obstruction. By 8:30 AM, they had Daniel in emergency surgery. They found large amounts of scar tissue that caused an obstruction which led to the perforation. The surgeon was optimistic and said everything went well and he should have a full recovery.

2/7/2025 update - Daniel is absolutely exhausted. He's having difficulty getting any real sleep. He's falling asleep while texting people, or talking, or just blinking. He's only sleeping for about 20 minutes to an hour at a time. His NG tube causes mucus to build up in his pharynx making it difficult to swallow and breathe at times. He's having difficulty clearing it out on his own because of the immense amount of pain it causes him to try and clear his throat or cough. The care team wants him to clear it on his own so they're going to have him wear a binder (a girdle of sorts) and give him an extra dose of pain meds to help Daniel try and clear the mucus out of his throat. The binder will help stabilize Daniel's abdominal region and hold everything in place so that the sudden jolt from coughing doesn't put such a strain on his abdominal muscles. He's been using the incentive spirometer more too, but not like he did previously. Daniel is understandably tired and doesn't have the same drive to push through the pain as he had previously, but he is still making progress in the right direction.

For clarification, Daniel did not end up needing to have an ostomy bag, which he is thankful for. He apologizes, he's having trouble keeping up with messaging people right now, but is slowly getting back to people as much as he's able to.

They did a bowel sound assessment this morning and they did hear bowel sounds. Daniel is starting to have intestinal cramping which is a good sign things are moving in the right direction. The surgeon doesn't feel confident to start clamping trials based on his output from last night so Daniel is in a holding pattern for at least today.

12/8/2025 update - Tech came in and did vitals, Daniel felt like something wasn't quite right and the tech tried working with him as best she could. Unfortunately Daniel was so out of it the tech had to go bring the nurse in. He mentioned Daniel had a fever of 100. something.

He did a full check up and Daniel urinated. Daniel didn't realize how badly he needed to relieve himself until after emptying his bladder, which relieved a good bit of pressure on his abdomen. At this time it was also discovered the Ng tube wasn't functioning properly. Daniel communicated that he felt like there was something he should be getting out. The nurse flushed out his NG tube and reset everything and ,sure enough, that thinned out the bile enough that the NG tube was then able to suction out the contents of Daniel’s stomach (if the NG tube isn't working properly and Daniel’s intestines are not fully functional, Daniel's stomach will overflow with digestive fluids and will then begin to forcefully empty the contents of his stomach via his mouth - vomiting). Daniel feels significantly better now and the fever dissipated once Daniel was able to relieve himself and his NG tube was working properly again. The staff will be keeping a close eye on Daniel though in regards to the fever. The care team has been hypervigilant about taking care of Daniel and checking him over, especially since he had some major concerns and alarming symptoms during his last hospitalization that were not taken seriously by medical personnel. That ended up resulting in major life-threatening complications for Daniel, prolonging his recovery. (For those who are unaware, on August 30th 2024 Daniel had emergency surgery to correct a bowel obstruction which was caused by something called meckels diverticulitis. He made a remarkable recovery, or so it seemed, they wanted to discharge Daniel after 3 days but Daniel requested to stay another night. Daniel then proceeded to vomit up a liter of bile that same night. After that things took a dark turn for Daniel. He was in constant and intense pain, spiking high fevers, unable to form coherent sentences, became extremely lethargic, meanwhile the medical staff said it was normal and ignored Isabella for the most part when she expressed that something is horribly wrong and that she believes Daniel is showing signs of septicemia. They then did the absolute minimum to take care of Daniel. They began cutting his pain medication, trying to push Ativan on Daniel, gaslighting the situation essentially saying it was all in Daniel's head, taking x-rays when they should have been taking CT scans with contrast. This went on for a week before Isabella had enough and escalated Daniel's case and began involving internal medicine and infectious disease. This decision on her part put significant pressure on the surgeon to look at Daniel’s case more seriously. The surgeon finally relented and did a CT scan with contrast, after almost a week of unnecessary suffering on Daniel’s part, it was revealed that the initial surgery had failed, resulting in his bowel to re-twist and this time it had perforated so he was fighting off a major infection. He ended up having to get another emergency surgery to correct the failed surgery and then spent another week in the hospital on heavy duty antibiotics. He's fortunate to be alive. Three times he has been at deaths door now in the span of only a few months.)

2/13/2025 update - DISCHARGE DAY!!!

Daniel is in much more pain than he was after his previous surgery. He won't be able to really get back to work for another 6-8 weeks, and even then it's a limited capacity. He'll slowly have to build up his strength.

Daniel had only just started doing pushups two weeks prior to this hospitalization. We have a long road ahead of us yet.

2/14/2025 update - Dawson and Apollos and Kenai came back home. Theresa and Lucia dropped them off and brought dinner for the family. Dawson so far seems to be handling the transition back home well. He's excited to see his daddy and sister after being separated from them for a week. Apollos is having a more difficult time being home. He's very somber, he says he misses his cousins, and is very concerned about his daddy. Apollos has also been asking to see Daniels boo-boo and wants to know if Daniel is in pain. Subaru has been home since yesterday. She seems happy to be back, but definitely gets upset when her daddy says he can't pick her up. She doesn't really understand too well but does appear to understand in some capacity that Daniel has a bad boo-boo on his abdomen.

Jim, Linda, and Brenda have gone over and beyond caring for us at this time. They have completely taken over the responsibility of making Daniel's meals and pureeing everything. They have also provided some meals and snacks for the rest of the family as well. We're incredibly grateful, this alleviates a huge burden off of Daniel and Isabella during this difficult time transitioning back home.