A Family's Fight

Friends should never have to FIGHT alone.. Please consider helping the Francois family win their battle! 

She would do anything for anyone. She is one of the most beautiful, giving, loving people I have ever met. She has the most contagious smile and is always willing to help anyone in anyway that she can. She is a loving wife, and one of the BEST Mommas I have ever known! I am describing my Beautiful friend Elle. Anyone that knows her will agree with all of the above. She and her family have been through some very rough times lately. Her family is her life, and she has had to face things every mommy hopes will never happen. Both of her blonde haired blue eyed perfect babies have had medical issues and it has become very hard for Elle and her husband to keep up... While fighting for her babies Elle has also faced medical issues of her own. I am in awe of her strength. She is such a fighter, but as her friend I can see she can use a little help. But, she is the giver, and not used to being on the other side of things... I have explained to her that sometimes everyone can use a little help and that she has plenty of people that truly care and want to be there for her and her family in any way they can!!
Here is some information on what they have going on...

Aubrey is 18 months old. In February 2016, she just completely stopped walking and crawling one day and had then started showing signs that she was in pain. She would wake up crying and be sore all day, especially if you moved her legs or body a certain way, you could see she was in so much pain. She had gone to see the pediatrician doctor on February 16th and they sent her to the hospital to have her first round of blood work and X-rays done. The next day she was sent to see an orthopedic doctor as well. They did more blood work and X-rays there. They both went over the test results that day and found that Aubrey's blood work was showing something wrong in the ANA. All they knew at this point was that it showed that she has some type of an auto immune disorder disease. They weren't sure which one or what's causing it. They put her on a new medicine that day. From there, the doctors said there wasn't much further they could do here so they sent her to a Rhuematologist specialist in Chicago, which she got to finally see on March 29th. That day they did a full body check exam on her an then had 14 different types of blood work drawn and a urine sample. The Rheumatologist specialist said that she agreed with the other doctors and that also Aubrey has inflammation and arthritis in both of her knees, legs, wrists and possibly arms at this point. There's a possibility it could be: Junior Rhuematoid Arthritis, Lupus, Lyme Disease or others. They started her on a new medicine that day. They are having her get an eye exam on April 14th and an MRI in Chicago on April 18th. She will then go back to Chicago to see the Rhuematologist specialist on April 25th for some results from all these tests. They are hoping to have some type of answers and a definite diagnosis of Aubrey for us on that date. She will eventually have to go through physical therapy also to hopefully start to help her learn and get to start walking again.
*This family will not let this get them down. They have FRIENDS like us to support them and most of all they have Love, Hope, and Faith on their side.. They will FIGHT!!!

Heath is 4. He started having a problem back in May 2015. He had lost a tooth right after he turned 4, which just fell out and from the entire root and was rare. He would have days and wake up nights crying with lots of pain. He had X-rays and blood work done. After 5 months of many tests and seeing the pediatrician and pediatric dentist and an endocrinologist specialist here and not being able to figure out a diagnosis or find any answers, they referred us to the Shriners and Barnes Childrens hospitals in St. Louis, MO. They set an appointment for Heath to see a team of specialist doctors there. He went from October 13th - 16th, where he had gone through an extreme about of blood work, X-rays, and other tests in those 4 days. They found he had a low phosphate levels and that Heath has an extremely rare bone disease called Hypophosphatasia. His is Odonto. So it's surrounding his mouth, face and skull areas. He lost another tooth shortly after and will continue to lose more along the way they said. He may have the pain whenever he's going through losing the teeth. They are hoping once his adult teeth come in that they will be ok but they won't know that yet until it happens. The disease is extremely rare especially for his age so they don't know much about it all yet. Heath will continue to be checked by his pediatrician and his pediatric dentist 2-3 times a year and will go back to St. Louis at least every 3 years to see those doctors there to check on it and see where he is with the disease.
*This family will not let this get them down. They have FRIENDS like us to support them and most of all they have Love, Hope, and Faith on their side.. They will FIGHT!!!



Elle is 38.
Her journey started when she had her son almost 5 years ago in May 2011. After delivering her son, the doctors had left placenta inside her which caused her to hemorrhage 3 weeks after giving birth. She had been to the hospital ER three times that week from feeling very ill and bleeding. They kept sending her home. Then at home the day after they sent her away, she hemorrhaged almost to death. The ambulance came and got her and they ended up having to do a DNC on her and give her blood transfusions to save her life and then was put on iron pills for the next 6 months. Fast forward to 2012 to 2014, they were trying to become pregnant with their second child but couldn't. Which was being caused due to what happened after having her son. They struggled for a year and a half and finally decided to try fertility methods. After 4 months of going through a rough time of all that, she finally got pregnant. They then lost the baby at 9 weeks due to an ectopic pregnancy. They then stopped everything. After a few months went by they became pregnant on their own. They were pregnant with their sweet Aubrey. At 18 weeks from a sonogram, they were told there was something wrong and she had something called an Amniotic Band which surrounded Aubrey in the womb. This was also due to the troubles from after having her son. There was so much scar tissue and it had caused this. They said it could potentially harm the baby. It could cut off her cord or take chunks out of the baby's body parts. They were unsure if it would or not and they wouldn't for sure know exactly until they had the baby. They had Aubrey in September 2014 and she came out perfect! After having Aubrey, Elle went through a year of having abdominal pains for 3-4 days every month and never getting a period. She had many tests done to try and figure out what was wrong. They couldn't figure it all out. They thought it could be due to a ton of scar tissue and that she may end up having to have a hysterectomy. The day before an appt with a specialist to see about that, Elle had her pastor annoint her with oil and pray over her. That same night, she had started a period and from then on, all her pain was gone and she was healed. Between losing the baby and being pregnant with Aubrey, Elle had then noticed some changes in her vision. It was becoming very blurred and hard to see especially out of her right eye. She had gone to 3 different eye doctors within 1 month. They all told her nothing was wrong with her and made her feel like she was crazy or making it up. They chopped it up to just due to being pregnant and it probably being from hormones and told her to wait until 3 months after having the baby to get checked again and she would be fine. So in January 2015 she did just that, meanwhile her vision was becoming much worse and she couldn't see out of her right eye at all and it was a dark black circle that she saw. She went back in to the eye doctor and they spotted it right away. She had a rare disease called Histoplasmosis. It was causing her to go blind. Her vision was now at 20/200 and basically blind in the right eye. She was referred right away that day to a retina specialist. The doctor said the retina of her eye was full of blood. She had many blood vessels growing into the wrong parts of her eye and they were filling up with blood and bursting, causing the blood to go to the retina and causing her to go blind. They immediately drained the blood from her retina and came up with a plan. They gave her some rough news, that her disease was non curable and this point and she would have this for her entire life. She would then immediately start having to get shot injections into her eye with a medicine that would try to start draining the pockets of blood and try to reverse the eyesight and bring it back as much as they could. Unfortunately there was already a lot of damage done and she has scar tissue in parts of her eye and in those areas she would never get vision back there. She had to do the shot injections once every month for the entire first year. They had finally got the blood pockets to go down more than they had been and got her eyesight pretty much to where they would be able to get it to which was 20/60. Since then they have been trying to slowly push her eye shot injections out from every 4 weeks to 6, 8, 10, and now to 12 weeks. They will see if it will stay stable where it's at with only doing them that often and hope it doesn't revert backwards. If so she will have to start getting them more often again. She will for sure have to continue to get these injections for the rest of her life and will just be watched carefully by the specialist. Hopefully they will find a cure for it one day.
*This family will not let this get them down. They have FRIENDS like us to support them and most of all they have Love, Hope, and Faith on their side.. They will FIGHT!!!

Friends should never have to FIGHT alone, let's help them with their battle!!!
Please consider donating to help with medical expenses.. They have enough to worry about with getting their family healthy, lets give them one less worry!
Thank you so much in advance!