Ellia is our brave 5 year old niece from Branson, MO that was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis of her arm on 1/24/2025 which resulted emergency surgery and amputation of her right arm and shoulder with tissue removal across her chest and part of her neck to save her life. At this time she is still in a medical induced coma and going thru daily surgeries.

Ellia is the youngest of 5 children and they are hours away from home in Kansas City's Children's Mercy in the PICU. To say Ellia is brave and strong is an understatement. Please continue to pray for her and her family.

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Update 1/31/2025

Nick and I (Ashley) have been humbled by how this journey has touched so many people. I think the last time we sat and tried to quantify it we are in the thousands of people caring and praying for us. The response of love and outpouring has been a bit overwhelming to be honest.

A few updates as of January 31st:

Ellia has come through a few surgeries to make sure they got all of the necrotizing fasciitis. The surgeons have been successful at cleaning the wounds, and stopping the spread. Ellia was able to get a wound vac on her, which is a special dressing to promote healing. As of yesterday, (Jan 30th) the surgical team placed a derm mesh layer over her wounds to act as scaffolding to build and grow skin grafts on. We will know if the mesh integrated well and we can start the skin graft process in 10-14 days if it heals well and doesn’t get infected.

Some Specific Requests:

* Derm layer would heal and integrate quickly.

* Ellia is still sedated on the vent. Particularly her left lung, needs to clear up. She has some pneumonia in there and we have been monitoring and treating it. She has been handling breathing treatments on the vent well, but she would be less bothered if she didn’t have all the junk in there.

* Fevers would stay down

* That God would give her new skin because He is a healer. He heals withered hands, stops bleeding, makes the blind to see, attaches ears and knits us together. He can do creative miracles because he's a creative God!!

Ways The Lord has shown up:

* Kidney function is at normal range for her!

* Ellia is aware (despite the sedation) of what's going on around her and she's able to communicate with us with a "Thumbs up for____" game.

* We met the reason why we got 3 extra days into the Ronald McDonald room pods here in the hospital. Nick got to pray with the mother of a child who was well enough to move out of the PICU the same morning we were going to check out of our temporary room.

* We found out that when we were back in Springfield Mercy Kids ER, the PICU ended up going on divert as soon as we got there, allowing all resources to be sent to Ellie when we were there.

* Nick's work was so generous and doubled his time off so it doesn't impact our family for the first month of our stay here in KC.

* We keep encountering people in this massive hospital who know who Ellie is. It's shocking how much of an impact she has had on the entire staff, surgeons, and other parents in the PICU we have encountered. They are often in tears checking on her. The medical teams have been telling us they are praying for her and disclosed that the whole team was rattled that fateful Friday.

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Initial post:

This is long, but if you would like to know about Ellia and how faithful God is, keep reading.

-Friday, January 17th:

The kids and I were doing our usual grocery shopping and about halfway through the third store, Ellia got lethargic and tired, complaining of a tummy ache and wanting to take a nap. We spent the weekend resting, with no fevers or any other complaints.

-Monday, January 20th:

The kids were getting ready for bed, they were rough housing downstairs playing “Cannon”. What I thought was launching stuffies into the air shortly turned to launching humans. Ellia suffered a fractured elbow as a result of not sticking the landing. We took her to the ER Monday night where they X-rayed and splinted her arm, then sent us home assuring us they would send in an orthopedic referral for her.

-Tuesday, January 21st:

We had a good day at home, managing pain, doing school, playing with friends. It was impossible trying to keep Ellie down and reminding her not to jump on the couch. I called the clinic that morning asking about the referral, and they told me that they would call me when they got it. Since Ellia was pretty pain-free, I decided to wait and not just take her to Mercy walk-in orthopedic office. (As of Jan 27th, they have yet to call). Tuesday night was the worst night. We couldn’t manage Ellia’s nerve pain with overlapping pain medications. The most she slept was 20 mins in my arms, the rest of the night was crying and moaning in pain.

-Wednesday, January 22nd:

The kids were scheduled for early morning dentist appointments. In an effort not to reschedule and wait another 6 months, since Ellia seemed stable but exhausted, we went up to Springfield. I was hoping to take her to the orthopedic walk-in clinic after her cleaning. Her dentist saw her and immediately asked what had happened. He happened to be friends with the only peds orthopedic surgeon in the area since they go to church together. He texted his friend asking if Ellia could be seen that day. We got an immediate response saying to come in as soon as we left the dentist. I dropped the boys off at my parents a few blocks away and went to the Orthopedic hospital.

As soon as we got to the Orthopedic hospital, they were waiting for us. We skipped the line and went directly back to a room. Due to Ellia playing a lot on Tuesday, we opted to do more X-rays in case she had done more damage to it, and that’s why Tuesday night was so bad. X-rays revealed barely a fracture above the elbow in her humerus bone with a little blood pooling by it. We decided to put her in a soft-sided cast to stabilize her arm. They assured me she would bounce back, begin to eat more, and that in a few hours once she realized she could move without pain, my biggest challenge would be keeping her down. Wednesday night Ellia was exhausted; she kept waking up in pain, but she was able to doze a little sitting up on the couch.

-Thursday, January 23rd:

Ellia woke up with pain and not wanting to move, walk, or eat. An area above her cast had become swollen, purple, and tender to the touch. It looked a lot like bruising, like she had been in a fight. I called the orthopedic doc and left a message about what we were seeing. We got her showered for the day, and the purple got deeper. I could not shake the feeling that something was off…thinking it was the cast being too tight. We loaded up and headed back to the clinic. As I was walking in, the doc returned my call. We were able to walk right into the front doors and be ushered into a room. Worried that we might have missed a shoulder fracture, we decided to do more X-rays, which came back clear. And examining Ellia’s purple shoulder and slightly discolored hand, the decision was made to put her back into a splint to allow for swelling ups and downs.

-Thursday afternoon:

Ellia’s arm color didn’t get better. It became more inflamed and moved up to encase her shoulder. Along with the continuing purple coloring in her hand, her other hand and feet began getting very cold. She refused to eat much but was able to drink more than before. I kept up on the pain meds for her, but nothing seemed to help turn the corner; if anything, she kept getting more lethargic, clingy, and tired. By the time Nick got home, what we thought was bruising had begun to spread across her chest toward her heart.

-Thursday evening:

Nick and I swallowed dinner whole while rushing to get the kids packed up. We dropped the boys off with my parents on the way to Mercy Children’s ER in Springfield. At this point, Ellia would not even walk anymore. We didn’t even get Ellia’s ER medical bracelet on before we were immediately rushed to a room where 10 people swarmed her and began working on her.

It was determined that because Mercy Children’s in Springfield didn’t have any beds open and Cox South in Springfield refused her due to her low vitals, Ellia would be airlifted to Mercy Children’s in Kansas City. We spent the next few hours with Ellia getting stable enough to transport. She was on multiple IVs, morphine, and antibiotics. We did multiple blood tests, X-rays, and a CT. No answers only that it was an infection. During this time, we cut off the splint and saw the extreme discoloration of her limb all the way down to her fingers. It was during these few hours where the infection began spreading a terrifying inch an hour, rapidly going up into her neck and chest area.

-Friday, January 24, 2:00 a.m.:

We leave a conscious, talking Ellia with the transport team. She gave Nick kisses and told me she loved me. We told her we would see her at the children’s hospital. An ER nurse assures me KC docs are the best and she used to work up there before she had to move. Nick and I hustled back home and packed a bag. We are now 4 hours behind her instead of 3 since we had to go back to Branson and then up to Kansas City. At this point, I haven’t slept for three days.

4:00 a.m.:

Nick and I drive to KC together trying to take shifts sleeping. The KC hospital calls us to update us about Ellia’s condition when she arrived from transport. They asked for approval to prep her for MRI and intubate her for some procedures so she’s not in pain.

6:45 a.m.:

Nick and I are taken back to PICU where Ellia’s room is. Ellie is intubated and her swelling and inflammation have moved across her chest and up into her neck and throat. Docs had no clue what it was other than it was a fast-moving infection. We are told the MRI appt to figure out if there was an abscess in her arm we were missing, wasn’t going to be until 3:00 p.m. The MRI would be extensive and they needed time to get her stable enough to move and transport to MRI with all of her tubing and IVs.

Nick and I went down to grab some coffee, but didn’t end up getting it since we got called back almost immediately to her room for emergency surgery. While we had been traveling downstairs, the general surgical team had come in and examined Ellia. They figured out it was necrotizing fasciitis, and we had to move quickly in order to stop the spread of damaged tissue. They prefaced it with the fact that we could potentially have to amputate fingers if the damage was bad enough, but that would be a later date. We were also told that with Ellia as sick as she was with septic shock, we could lose her on the operating table. After praying over her, they rushed her off to surgery, which was supposed to be 2-4 hours depending on the extent of damage.

15 mins later, as Nick and I were walking upstairs with our things for the Ronald McDonald house, Nick gets a call. Three of the surgical team members are waiting for us. They take us aside and inform us it’s way worse than we thought. The damaged tissue from the necrotizing fasciitis has destroyed all of Ellia’s right arm, shoulder, and it was creeping up her neck and over to her left side fast. We had no choice but to amputate her right arm, shoulder, and remove a large portion of flesh from her neck and torso if we had wanted to attempt to save her life, and even then, it was no guarantee she would survive the surgery after all the shock to her system.

Ellia made it through the surgery stable. The surgeons believe they got everything from the necrotizing fasciitis. We would need to do several surgeries to keep going back in and cleaning the wound field, but they were able to get clear margins and stop the spread. Ellia’s kidneys have been a big concern. With toxic shock and this necrotizing fasciitis, the kidneys are responsible for filtering all of that stuff out of her system. They sustained acute damage.

The last few days here have looked like some big wins. We have Ellia’s wounds healing well. Her fevers from sustaining all of this fluctuate at times, but her body has been able to kick them without Tylenol. Ellia’s kidney numbers are super close to the numbers they want her to be at, so they are healing. We go in for a third round of cleaning in the OR and to put on a wound vac today to prepare her body for healing, eliminate swelling, and help her tissue heal for skin grafts. We are looking at a long process of skin grafting and building tissue and muscle. This whole time Ellia has been sedated in a medical coma. We don’t expect to wake her for a week to give her little body time to heal as much as possible.

As Nick and I have learned and had our faith stretched over the last few years, we have come to see quickly how the Lord has provided, been faithful, and shown up. His hand is on Ellia, and I’m going to list the ways below to show you that there’s nothing our God cannot do!

* January 8th, 2025, Ellia accepted Jesus as Lord and was so excited to share with everyone her decision.

* Our dentist “just happened” to be friends with the only orthopedic peds surgeon.

* The orthopedic peds surgeon “just happened” to have a morning opening.

* We bypassed a 3-hour wait at the Orthopedic clinic by communicating with the surgeon directly.

* We had no wait at Mercy ER Thursday night; they took us back immediately.

* The peds beds were all full in Springfield, and Cox Hospital’s denial of us brought us to Kansas City where the specialists are.

* It’s the ER nurse’s job to arrange transport, but because she was inundated with meds, charts, and tests, the overseeing ER doc arranged her to be airlifted while all of this was going on. We were able to get out of there quicker.

* The helicopter transport team was so kind, and because it took 2 hours to get Ellia stable enough to fly, they were able to build a relationship with her, and she wasn’t scared going with them.

* The KC orthopedic doc asked a general surgeon to consult, and they came quickly and were the ones to figure out what we were dealing with and called for emergency surgery.

* The emergency surgery and not waiting until 3 p.m. for an MRI and longer for results allowed us to save Ellie’s other arm and ultimately her life.

* Nick was able to get us a Ronald McDonald room on the same floor as Ellia’s PICU room despite their wait list. We are able to walk two minutes and go rest if we need to.

* Ellia’s kidneys are in normal range and just a few points away from our healthy target number.

* We are surrounded by an incredible care team.

We have believing nurses and doctors who pray over Ellie, braid her hair, let us play worship music, and talk to her just as if she’s awake. Nick and I have been in 5 different hospital systems between Tom’s cancer treatments and Ellia’s ordeal, and we can say 100% KC Mercy Kids tops them all.

* The support of our church family has been overwhelming amazing. I’m so thankful for all the people rallying around us within prayer, calls, and even sending baskets of survival items.

* The support of family has been so strong. They have dropped everything to take care of our other kids, to bring us things we needed, to message us, and pray over us.

* The support of friends has been flooding over us in ways unimaginable. From prayers, to gift cards, to bubbly water and Pepto, to offering to take our boys, etc. I’m overwhelmed at the support from everyone in such a dark time!