Hello Everyone!! My name is Ericka and I am Kacie Rae’s mom.

I am on here in behalf to try and raise enough money for my daughter to go to an Intensive Physical and Occupational Therapy out in Cary, North Carolina called “All Kids are Perfect”.

To give you all a back story on Kacie’s Journey of life and why we are here today, begins the moment she was born. I had Kacie exactly at 24 weeks gestation, which means I had her four months early, due to developing Severe Preeclampsia. I had an emergency C-section, because having her naturally wasn’t an option. Kacie had a 2% survival rate of making it through the delivery and IF she did, she had a 20% chance of surviving afterwards, and as you can see, my girl is still here! She defeated all odds stacked up against her and she put up one heck of a fight and still continues to do so every single day. She was born at Toledo children’s Hospital, and that is where her long and very scary NICU journey began. Kacie has always had very sick, weak lungs. She’s endured Four collapsed lungs which caused her to have to get four chest tubes, four separate times in a matter of her first two months of being here on earth. She did have a grade 2 and a grade 3 brain bleed that eventually did subside after 8 long months. Which did unfortunately cause some brain damage, but the scariest part about her beautiful little brain, is that half of her cerebellum hemisphere is absent. Meaning without that, causes a lot of physical and mental delays with her fine and gross motor skills. But let me tell you, that has never stoped her. Kacie is doing things her doctors said would never be possible! After two months at Toledo Hospital, she was rushed to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, 3 hours away from home, due to a problem with her eyes. She had to get Avastin injections and Toledo Hospital wasn’t able to perform that procedure at that time, but it had to be done immediately because she had ROP with Plus disease, which essentially causes the retina to completely detach leaving her completely blind. Those injections could stop it from happening, which it did! My girl can still see the world! We were told after she had that procedure done, we would be transferred back home to Toledo, but as I stated before, Kacie had/has very sick lungs and developed a condition called BPD (Bronchial Pulmonary Dysplasia) caused from the multiple collapsed lungs and from her being on not one, but two different ventilators for 7 months out of her 8 and a half month long NICU journey, and Nationwide specialized in that very condition and gave her the care she needed and to give her every opportunity to eventually get off those ventilators that took soo many trials and errors to do so. She had spent the remaining 6 and a half months in Columbus, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise even though it was so incredibly hard. Everyday was and continues to be a rollercoaster ride. Kacie had gotten so sick to the point we had to make the decision no parent ever wants to even have to be asked to make. We were told to make the decision of pulling all her care away that day and to replace it with “Comfort Care” and to be placed in my arms to pass away, OR continue doing everything in our power and the Doctors, to try and keep her alive but by doing so could possibly cause her more pain than good. We were told to have our whole family to come in and see her for their very first time and in the same day, to say their goodbyes. We couldn’t make that decision, but what we did do was ask that if she was going to go, that we wanted her to experience a fully belly because at that time she hasn’t had anything to eat besides fatty lipids, which her body rejected and TPN which gave her little body all the nutrients it needed at that time. The Doctors were scared, because her stomach was a huge concern, she was going into liver and kidney failure and they said the next thing to go that day was her brain and her heart. She stopped making wet diapers, her stomach was so large, completely black and distended, but they agreed to doing the TINIEST amount of breast milk to see if she tolerated it, and she DID!! They slowly but surely kept giving her slightly more each time, but you know what? Her gas levels were improving, because at that time she was completely acidotic. Her skin was gray, you could see every single vein in her body, she was losing weight and it all happened to quick. BUT just like that, she started making wet diapers over night and we witnessed a full blown MIRACLE right Infront of our very own eyes! I told Kacie that day, if she wanted to let go and to stop the fight, it was okay, that mommy would be okay. I didn’t want her to be in anymore pain. But if she chose to continue fighting, I’ll be right there fighting that fight with her, and she chose to FIGHT!

So here we are, Four years later still continuing that fight, because anyone who has ever had a baby in the NICU knows that even when they leave that Hospital, the rollercoaster ride doesn’t end there, it’s just the start to another ride. There is soo much more to her story, but my whole reasoning for telling you this, is to show you how resilient My daughter is. How much she’s willing to do and go through to be here despite all her odds and what Doctors say about her. They said she wouldn’t know how to move and get around… But even though Kacie doesn’t crawl around like the “standard” baby, she found a different way of doing so and made it happen. We always say she learns things “The Kacie Way” because yes, it may be different, BUT she’s doing it!! She has learned all her colors, soo many different animals, and in an HOUR she has learned 96% of the alphabet. She is working so hard on sitting up, but she has low muscle tone in her trunk. My daughter Kacie, is a complete miracle and deserves nothing more than to be given the chance at living the most fulfilling life possible. She’s not done proving people wrong. You can see how determined she is every single day. You see the curiosity in her eyes and how EXCITED she gets when she learns and accomplishes something new. So that’s why I am asking for this donation today, to send my girl somewhere, where I have seen how hard they push children like her. How much of a difference you see in the two weeks they are there in that program.

If you would like to see the amazing work these therapists perform, you can look up and watch their testimony’s on Facebook.

-All Kids are Perfect is an Intensive Physical and Occupational Therapy and allows children from all over to take part in their intensive therapy program to give them the chance to live a life full of possibilities and fulfillment and to be pushed to their full potential that you don’t get with standard everyday therapy. I truly believe this is the answer to many of our prayers for my sweet girl, to get her to finally accomplish goals we have been trying for years to accomplish. I know in my heart this will give her the biggest opportunity to push herself and to learn to finally stand on her own two feet, to be able to have purpose to all her movements like hand and eye coordination, holding her head up without struggle, to be able to sit up unassisted, to WALK, and to reallly play like I know she wants to!

Kacie and I, want to truly say thank you from the bottom of our hearts for taking the time to read her story and to make a donation that could quiet possibly change her life in the most amazing way possible!