Isaiah Rakabikabi

Gitona Berg & Amber Clark

Hello. My sister Amber and I are starting a Go Fund Me for our older sister, Trisha Rakabikabi and her family.

Trisha and Dan's son, Isaiah is currently in the hospital following a shunt placement surgery. Here's a little back story-

When Isaiah was born he was a little early at 33 + weeks and he had a little NICU stay. The following months after his birth were rough. He was so fussy and inconsolable. At 10 months Isaiah started crawling and sitting on his own but he was always sitting a little “tilted” and he would crawl that way too. They saw their local family doctor and he said he was probably fine but sent him for an eye exam and ultrasound of his head. Both came back fine and life went on. Several weeks later the doctor called and said he had continued to think of Isaiah and he wanted him to have an MRI done. This was the Lords doing prompting this doctor as truly Isaiah’s symptoms were not severe. He had an MRI and a scary diagnosis where he had a growth taking up 1/4 of the space in his brain. It was fluid filled and benign, which was great. But it was also scary as it was pressing on Isaiah’s brain stem. The neurosurgeon fenestrated the growth and they were told not to expect further complications. His last scan was in 2019 and things were looking good.

The last several months Isaiah’s been complaining of feeling dizzy and having frequent headaches. They decided they probably should have a routine scan just to be sure things were ok. Truthfully they expected the growth to have dissipated by now. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The growth had grown significantly and it was necessary for a shunt to be put in.

Isaiah had his shunt placement surgery on Tuesday, April 29th. The surgery went well and initially everyone took a collective sigh of relief.

However, as Isaiah began to wake up he started experiencing leg pain. Last night he was moved out of the ICU unit onto the main hospital floor. Within an hour of being moved Isaiah told Trisha his leg pain he had immediately after surgery was coming back. If you know Isaiah, you know he doesn’t really complain about much of anything. Trisha encouraged him to rest thinking it would likely go away with sleep. But things went from 0 to 100 really fast. They had to hold Isaiah tight as he was thrashing in pain and would have fallen out of bed if they weren’t keeping him restrained. They couldn’t get the pain under control and the doctor was paged. Neurosurgery was consulted and everyone is unsure why this is happening. One thought is nerve pain as the pressure has lessened fast off of his brain stem.

Isaiah is also experiencing complications walking and his eyes are not tracking.

Trisha, Dan, and Isaiah are still currently at Children's in Minneapolis looking at a longer stay than expected and still unsure how long that will be. Dan will be missing more work than originally planned as well as extra hotel and food expenses. Trisha and Dan also have four other children at home with Nana and Papa.

Amber and I wanted to start this Go Fund Me to help them out as they face this hardship.

Any other inquiries about sending gifts to Isaiah or anything else please email me.

Any little bit helps.